30/01/20

It’s so useful getting a really close up look at Rembrandt’s etchings, he definitely wasn’t scared of making marks and taking risks in how he put needle to plate.

Someone I follow on Instagram has given me the confidence to try taking small plates out and about with me. He dry-points onto his plates, which he attaches to a board, plus a little ink and a rag to rub into his marks. He even sent me some pics of his mobile set up.

21/01/20

The last few weeks I’ve maintained a steady pace, working on finishing the four tester self-portraits and really pushing my understanding of the different processes in each portrait. There’s been quite a lot of distraction from other areas of my life so it’s been a bit stop start, but that’s never really going to change so I have to learn to work with it.

I was talking to one of the full-time students in the workshop last week and I realised how much I’ve changed in the way I approach my portraits and yet how much I still have to work on incorporating this new approach in the actual work. I’ll never start a portrait again without considering what I intent to achieve and why. That makes me feel so empowered and in control of what I produce.

I have been testing materials in my modest way and the results are below, I’m underwhelmed by silver ink on black paper and slightly less underwhelmed by the silver on grey. The inversion takes all the depth and darkness out of the portrait. The silver on grey is a little more mysterious and ambitious but not as striking as the original.

I etched this plate at home and feel pretty chuffed with the result. I’m finding that using the hard ground then going back into it with drypoint is a really satisfying process. I no longer consider that first dip to be the definitive image, it’s just the starting point of a potentially transformative journey.

Continue reading “Ink, wipe, print, repeat.” →

10/01/20

I’ve continued to work on the self-portrait series, considering light and dark and how I’m using my line to convey emotion. I need to think hard about composition next and really start doing what I set out to which is pushing the frame of the portrait and how women are generally represented visually. The pleasing passive face!

Jo mentioned the gaze when I showed her what I’ve been doing over Christmas, it’s not really in my mind when I’m drawing, but it’s definitely a strong part of what I’m producing, but there’s a slight ambiguity in the look. It’s a look of potential vulnerability and pain, yet there’s also A directness challenging that vulnerability and hopefully also the viewer. I struggled to answer Jo when she asked me what I’m thinking when I draw these portraits, but I do know what I’m thinking when I draw, I need to get better at expressing it when I’m asked and not feel embarrassment.

Based on my tutorial with Paul Coldwell and Jo I’m feeling more sure footed about staying with the self-portraits and working them up to the point where I feel they’re completely finished. I’m also excited about paper and colour and experimenting with what I’m currently producing. Black Somerset paper with silver ink, that’s going to be my first experiment. The effect could be exactly what I’m looking for, disappearing and reemerging, hard to grasp and define?

We discussed the number I produce too, I’ve randomly made four but I’ve already been thinking what a large number of prints of women hung on a wall as a huge collective of women that break away from the visual norms of femininity I find so infuriating. Maybe this is something I can do with my self-portraits. Although I really want to produce the other idea. It’ll be a project that comes from my current work so it’s exciting to think there’s something to work on post-MA.

6/01/20

I knew this exhibition was going to be incredibly inspiring and it was even better than I anticipated. Kollwitz’s line, composition, use of light and dark….everything she places on paper is beautifully crafted. Her drawing is breathtaking.

It’s made me even more determined to master my drawing and keep at it until I achieve the level of crafting of light and shade that’s comparable in Kollwitz’s. It’s good to acknowledge more consciously my ambition to be REALLY good at drawing and admit that I’m not REALLY good yet, it’ll take much more work, but I can get there.

Her composition is striking, I know my composition has been flagged up a few times by different people as something I need to work on. I want to keep looking back at her work and reminding myself of my ultimate goal in my prints for the next few weeks and months.

I did a bit of copying of her work while I was there and have asked for the catalogue for my birthday so I can carry on with a bit of plagiarism!!

02/01/20

I’ve been taking another look at Barbara Walkers work, I find her drawing and printmaking inspiring because she unashamedly uses her drawing skills and is also extremely contemporary in her choice of subject matter. Below I’ve taken an example of two of her projects which I find particularly interesting.

The first is from 2008 called ‘Show and Tell’, it’s almost anthropological in its conception. I need to be braver in my choices and make more political work, but political in a personal sense, to not be scared of casting my option based on lived experiences.

The second is from 2018 called ‘Vanishing Point’, to me this is an example of printmaking made relevant to a contemporary subject matter. The clever use of photopolymer combined with her drawing. It’s a startling body of work that so simply highlights within the history of fine art the invisibility and subjugation of black people. I need to make sure I’m developing work that speaks of today’s issues, they can be personal, about being a woman or mother or artists but they need to resonate and not be produced in a bubble of “me”.

From http://www.barbarawalker.co.uk

‘Show and Tell’, is a series of ongoing works which explore how clothing is used by specific groups of men as a status symbol within their communities. The portraits, created on paper depict faceless young men often turned with their backs to the viewer. By obscuring the identity of her subjects, invites an audience to scrutinise the ‘information’ available – clothing, hair and jewellery – in order to complete the portrait. The works investigate expressions of individuality, conformity and stereotyping – and provoke the following questions: How far are fashion and consumerism responsible for providing the styles that individual’s desire? Do individuals take a lead on how they choose to look while fashion and commercialism follow? And what role do the media play informing public opinion?’

‘Vanishing Point’, explores the visibility of Black subjects in Western European painting within a British national art collection. As demonstrated throughout Walker established bodies of work, she is interested in the representation of Black people in our public archives and collections. Vanishing Point is an opportunity to explore this interest further, and to focus in particular on Art History and the way it has been shaped by institutions and the art establishment in this country from the late Georgian period to the present day.’ (2020, Barbara Walker’s website).

I am aware I want my self-portraits to speak to wider experiences of universal feelings of the dark and light side of being human, but I need more than that for my final MA project.

I’m going to the British Museum on Monday to visit a Käthe Kollwitz exhibition of mainly self-portraits and there’s also an exhibition of drawings from their collection which I want to see. Maybe I’ll get some further inspiration there!

01/01/2020

First day of the year and the first thing on my mind is the MA, which is nothing new. I rarely stop thinking about it, which has its benefits and drawbacks!

There has been inactivity because I have to kids, but I did get a day in my studio yesterday. The plan had to be to start my hard ground self-portrait to continue my series, but I saw Annie Burrows incredible drawing on Instagram and decided to rethink my steam rolling attitude towards getting work produced. Annie doesn’t produce lots of work, but what she produces is well thought through and beautifully executed (on re-reading this bit of my blog, this is the same old conflict coming into play about execution versus the immediacy and feeling of letting the heart take hold of the hand and being freer with my mark making).

As with the open bite of my steel portrait, the accidentally marks are of interest and create a third dimension. This is something to think about more fully next term. I think the drawing is better when the expression is more exaggerated or raw, the composition will hopefully start to develop once I feel my drawing and plate mark making has improved.

My mind is also wondering about where I go next, but I’m trying to remain with the here and now and enjoy producing this work. My studio set up is now paying off and I’m ready to think about attempting aquatint, although my test plate was a disaster!

I want to shock and surprise people, I want Leo and Jo to feel what I’ve produced is somewhat unexpected from me. To do that I need to keep pushing myself and forcing my hand to draw.

…On process and progress.

10/12/19

This term has been full of stops and starts, I’ve had lots of ideas and clarity of what I want my work to do and say, but it’s been really hard getting going with it. In the last few weeks of term I’ve bridged the cavern and started producing more interesting drawing, pulling together some of the things I’ve been cultivating in my mind for months!

It’s easy for me to feel I’m not progressing fast enough and trash what I’ve achieved so far because I am still in the early stages of finding a stronger voice in print. I’m trying to be patient and not run before I can walk. In some ways I feel I’m starting from the beginning and trying to understand processes from a different vantage point.

I’m disappointed that I’m finding it hard to go from my sketchbook to plate with my drawing and am still trying to find the best way for me to get over my fear of the plate.

It feels so unnatural drawing straight onto a plate, I want to conquer this fear and let my hand be freer.

Continue reading “End of term thoughts…” →

27/11/19

Another artist to add to my collection of inspiration.

This drypoint is from Liorah’s book, The Printmakers’ Bible, I’m really appreciating drypoint, I’m enjoying its immediacy and beautiful delicacy. I feel free when I’m doing drypoint. I’m currently building up my self-portraits, I’ve finally found my focus and stopped wringing my hands. I feel liberated. And I can see all around me art that reflects my own intentions, such as in this drypoint of a very mundane scene, but he unashamedly embraces the line for the everyday mundane scenes that make up the shape of our lives.

My lines have a purpose, an intent, to share a moment in time maybe, a feeling shared. I’m calling on the darker side of being human, where deeper more difficult feelings dwell. Having said that, I still want a lightness, which could be just in the way I mark make. But right now this is where I am, particularly with family events making life feel particularly fragile and a gift really, that we shouldn’t waste navel gazing. However, the dark emotions we all feel at times are a reality and I need to continue probing them for now.

1/11/18

Women Artists

I would like to consider women artists and women in art in general. How ideas of femininity change/are constructed in society over time. Perhaps the focus of my proposal will be more around ideas of femininity rather than specifically the construction of gender in childhood. That could still be one element within my studies but I’d like to think beyond this area for awhile.

It’s all still a bit wooly and broad, but I’ll keep digging down and I’ll find what this proposal is meant to be about.

Macfarlane, K (ed). (2018) ‘Close: Drawn Portraits’. Drawing Room, London.

This book has helped me understand a clearer path of investigation for my prints, the description of the expressive capacity of drawing has really resonated with me and helped me clarify my reasoning for the printed line.

Deanne Petheridges self-Portraits are described in here as a dissolution of form, where she’s more ‘interested in conveying how she feels as much as how she looks’ (2018, p. 11).

Nicola Tyson’s Portraits are intuitive ‘the hand takes the lead, rather than the head’ (2018, p. 11). This line is important and has stuck with me, my head tends to rule my hand/my creativity and I want my heart and my instinct to lead the way. I keep returning to this like a little mantra. Let my heart lead!

The essay that precedes this exhibition book by Hannah Williams, Drawing in/Drawing out has really progressed my own philosophy when it comes to why I’m still drawing portraits.

Portraits aren’t about rendering someone realistically, recording their features with exactitude it’s about capturing their essence, their personality, or even some universal “humanness”.

It’s an interrogation of interiority (2018, Williams p. 16).

Williams asks, how can the self, or other, be expressed in a series of lines and marks drawn onto a piece of paper, or in my case, the plate?

Dryden Goodwin’s A Day with my Father, A Day with my Son (2018). ‘an intimate engagement with the sitters unique physicality can be a powerful means of conveying the more transcendental qualities of their personhood’ (2018, Williams p. 20).

*Maybe THIS human engagement, this moment, is the point of contemporary portraiture. An antidote to the rushing, bustling world of hyper consumerism and rapidly advancing technology. It’s an intimate moment, capturing the human soul, our individual hopes and fears in this fast moving, over saturated society.

It’s a slow moment for the artist in the act of creation and for the viewer who chooses to look at the work. It’s a moment to contemplate the meaning of being human.

Williams is specifically talking about portraits drawn from life and I think that’s really significant part of the process, however, even when I draw from my photos I feel this energy is still channeled, it’s still a slower moment, time to think about being human. It’s a cathartic process, where I express myself through my line. Express the lightness and darkness of being. Each line holds a thought, a feeling, even if it’s only a fragment of one. This is so revelatory to me and made me realise how important it is to get over my fear of drawing and “messing it up”. Portraiture for me is a moment to contemplate the meaning of being human.

Williams is so right when she says that we are ‘‘drawn close’ into the fiction or reality of the act of making’ (p. 28).

William’s mentions French theorist, Roger de Piles, who describes ‘portraitures objective of representing, “not just a person in general, but this person in particular” relies on the artistic expression of the inside through the outside’ (2018, Williams p.16).