My Moleskine Exchanges - Update

This was done as part of Moleskine exchange 25 (Moly_x_25). I had to follow on from Clare's tribute to Van Gogh. I was stumped for a long time not knowing what to do. Ah, Matisse! That's always the answer!
For Moly_x_Portrait1 I drew the gorgeous Marina. She is such a delight to draw! I couln't stop!

I left drawing my self-portrait until last in Marina's book. After her I didn't find myself inspiring at all! I drew myself with Sunday morning hair.

What is an Artist Book? - An Interview with Sara Bowen

This question was on my mind when I recently made a journey to see an exhibition of artist books at Barratt Galleries in Alstonville. I wondered how much I actually knew about artist books, even though I have made a couple myself! The question was all the more poignant as my travelling companion was Sara Bowen, printmaker, artist book maker and friend. I knew Sara’s entry for the Southern Cross Acquisitive Book Award did not physically resemble a book although it had many ‘book’ qualities. Happily that day we were able to celebrate the acquiring of her book for the university's collection, along with others’ more book-like forms.
Later I asked Sara if she would allow me to ask her this question and others about her art practice, inspiration and the meaning of the motifs and symbols in her work - her river and her bridges. Sara arrived before me and as I walked in and scanned the coffee shop for her, at first I failed to notice her. As a newish arrival to Australia and Coffs Harbour I hadn’t expected her to be the one joining in conversations with nearby tables. Ah, but I was to learn more about her networking skills as the morning progressed.

Sara arrived in Australia in 2006, having left family and friends in Bristol, UK. She told me she came around to art the long way after 15 years of working with small businesses, setting them up and running various ones herself. She is now concentrating full-time on her art; well as full-time as a mother, wife, PHD candidate and project manager for the building of the family home can be.

JA How does your small business background help your art practice?
SB It has taken away the fear of the non-art part of being an artist. I’ve done cold calling with a suitcase of samples, written my own press releases and marketing plans and, because I have confidence that I can do those things, I don’t worry about them. It doesn’t mean I’m super confident or that I’m not terrified, but it does mean that I don’t panic about it.

JA How did you get started in printmaking?
SB In an effort to avoid killing my stepchild I was encouraged to get out of the house! I’d done life drawing and painting and I thought “Oh, printmaking that sounds good.” The little cogs went around in my head and just that whole thing about working backwards came easily. Somehow it all made sense for me.

JA How did you get started making artist books?
SB I don’t think I was really conscious of the fact that I was making artists books. I think I just ended up assembling things. I had a very vague idea of what I might do and it will just sit there in the back of my mind for ages and then something will trigger me off and it will usually be something like a little piece of cardboard or a photograph and I’ll think “that looks nice.” Tidying up the studio is actually quite often where it comes from, because I come across things I’d forgotten about, like bits of wire or a rusty nail or something and I’ll start thinking what can I do with that? And it ends up being a little exploration. That’s what starts me down the path and what the end is I’m not at all quite sure until I get there.
JA What printmaking medium do you most often work in?
SA The technique I use most often is viscosity printing where you are able to layer colours on your plate instead of having separate plates for separate colours. I change the viscosity, the runniness or thickness of the ink, and the different viscosities repel each other and instead of making a brown sludge like you might think, the colours stay separate and one top of each other. I’m interested in it as a technique to get multiple colours on the plate. This gives me the subtle colours I’m after. I also use a lot of embossing in my printing.

JA Where do you get your inspiration?
SB I love moody landscapes, bleak places where I can search for beauty. I am primarily a landscape artist. My work has an emptiness. I have a reoccurring motif in my printmaking, a swirl of river. It comes from a grainy black-and-white photograph of The Great Juanbung Swamp, which is the area at the confluence of the Lachlan and Murrumbigee Rivers. It was taken by my father-in-law from a crop-spraying plane in 1960. It is mainly a metaphor for journey.
JA You have been working on bridges in your Artist Book works. Have they always been a motif? Is it because of the river?
SB No. It’s got nothing to do with the river. It’s quite odd, but it’s got everything to do with moving countries. I moved here in October 2006 and I had my PHD started at UWE which was great because it made me feel like I wasn’t leaving everything behind, there was still some kind of connection with my old life and the people I knew and my art. But then I just didn’t have any contact from anyone in my old life. The people I felt very strongly connected to in Bristol turned out to be no good whatsoever at keeping up contact. I spent a year blogging about art and moving over here, being very up front with people about how I was feeling and I didn’t get a sausage back, no emails, no phone calls, no cards, no birthday presents, nothing! I spent 2007 feeling very, very lonely and very isolated.

Eventually I decided I needed to build bridges, metaphorical bridges that linked me with people, with ideas. I initiated a project with an artist back in the UK to exchange artist books and the project was to be about bridges. I spent ages fiddling around with different things and I came up with the idea of physically making a bridge. I read this lovely little poem by Walt Whitman called “A Noiseless Patient Spider”. It does mention the word ‘bridge’ in the poem once, but it’s about how spiders fling out a thread of gossamer and the wind catches it and they have no idea where they’re going to end up, an act of faith. It was such a meaningful way of looking at how I was feeling about my life. I think that’s been my way of working. Sometimes I just have to take courage that I don’t have and do something, even though I don’t know where I’m going to end up. The poem goes on and is effectively about building ones own bridge, what one needs in life is to do that. So it’s very reflective of my own experience and how I was feeling at the time.

It got me thinking about the form of the book and I’d already decided I was going to base this series of books on children's building blocks (you can build bridges with children's building blocks). I ended up with the carved plastic text, which was such a nightmare to do. Originally it wasn’t about the light shining through it with the shadow revealing the text, but about making the text a kind of gossamer. It just happened to work in that other way and gave it supplementary meaning.

There are a few other reasons why it ended up being very meaningful for me. One is that I’m terrified of spiders! I had hypnotherapy at Bristol zoo before I came to Australia so I could deal with the Australian creepy crawlies. I ended up holding a bird-eating tarantula in my hand. I am quite fascinated by them now although I still find them really repulsive. I also wrote a very bad poem about not being able to say anything meaningful to my father about leaving and going to live on the other side of the world and it was couched in terms of spiders.

That book has a much more open meaning available to it than most of what I do. Practically everything I do has a lot of personal meaning to it. I have a bit of a problem actually expressing the meaning to other people. In the end I’m very glad of people who do manage to work out what a work means, but its not why I’m giving them the object to look at. I’m very happy for them to give their own meaning.
I find my self really fascinated by artists who can write out very personal experiences in their art and the reason is because I can’t do it. I don’t know how one would begin. I tried it and doesn’t work for me.

JA What is an artist book?
SB MY definition of an artists’ book is hardly definitive and is highly subjective and probably very woolly from an intellectual perspective. I think an artists’ book is a book made by an artist, that requires the evocation of ‘book-ness’ in order to function as a complete work. There is the question of why make a thing defined as a ‘book’ rather than as a ‘sculpture’ or as a ‘print’? What’s so important about it being associated with being somehow a book? For me, there is something about a confounding of expectation (e.g. a book that is part of a child’s building block, for example, and in the same example, a slipcase – usually an afterthought – that has as much of a role in the complete piece as the book has itself; or perhaps where the text, written in shadows, is actually OUTSIDE the book rather than inside). There is also something about physicality: the ability to pick something up, however gingerly! and to view it as a piece of art from more than one direction – a quality that book arts share with sculpture, I guess. And perhaps there’s something about a thing having an outside and an inside: even my ‘bridge’ book comes concealed and had to be unwrapped and assembled in order to be ‘read’. There’s something there for me about text and covers too. Interestingly I find myself drawn to artists’ books with little or no text but find myself putting text in, sometimes obscurely, because that is part of my ‘model’ of what a book or book-object is. How conventional of me! But I like to subvert it too; although the shadow-writing aspect of my bridge book was an accidental aside rather than an intention from the start it makes me snigger quietly that there IS text and that there ARE covers for it, but that the text isn’t IN the book but written outside it!
JA How do you promote your work?
SB You never know who’s looking so it’s important to get it out there. Moving to a new country has given me the opportunity to make new networks. I like talking to people and putting them in touch with others. I work on the premise that people are happy to talk to you about themselves. They are also happy to be put in touch with new people that they can talk to about themselves. I don’t mean that in any negative way. My business experience is in creating structures that allow things to happen. I see networking as doing much the same.

JA Any advice for others who want to promote their work?
SB Just get out there and do it!
***


JA I don't think she means me though. I don't think she means I should get out there and do it. I don't think so. Not me. She wouldn't. Would she?

Note to self

Must do scanning today!

Ooh What Fun!

Well, I've had a hell of a lot of fun tonight since I discovered COLOURlovers!
These are some patterns I made up from colour palettes, some that I made myself and others from other CL members.
It is an active and open group of people who all share a love of colour and pattern. I'd love to paint this one!
Yes, I'd really love to paint this one... I think I might just have to!
Edited 27.8.08 - Check out their blog too: http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/

Inner Glow

James Gleeson - Australia's foremost Surrealist an exhibition at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery. I caught this exhibition on its final day which might give some indication of how much I was looking forward to seeing it. Gleeson is one of my daughters favourite artists and she had timed a visit home so she could see his paintings and mixed media drawings. I couldn't go with her that day and when she came home raving about the eloquence his work and how I would love the way he combined printed images with drawings I listened politely. I knew there would be intestines, and worse, and there was. And lots of them.

There was also other familiar Gleeson themes like the gentle waves on a calm secluded strangely familiar beach, the shells from that beach grown large and bursting with, well, maybe not intestines but something ominously internal. Naked men provide a realistic counterpoint to the wrenching disemboweled images, often sharing the same frame. Surprisingly their full frontal nudity provide the only images of genitalia. These are not latent sexual images from a sick mind.

There is beauty (somehow!) here too. It is the light and the colours the light illuminates, soft emerald greens, rosy pinks and deep magenta (where I feared there would be venous blue, membrane grey and blood red). The wrenching and tearing fails to extinguish hope, but instead seems to open the picture plane to allow entry of hope through the exquisite light. How is that possible?

At this time when I am planning to push my creative boundaries, and have actually allowed play to replace the seriousness I had allowed to creep in, the glow of Gleeson's light reminds me that the creative journey is always individual and that it really is OK to be me, warts, intestines and all. And really if it has served me no other purpose than to remind me to get back to drawing my deck of cards with alternate suits, one of which is body parts, it has served me well. I do believe I was up to the Ace of intestines...

I love paint!

When I first started this blog I had a little sentence at the top that said I like to paint, draw, make things, sketch, paint... yes, I like paint! It was there up until only a couple of months ago when I was finally too embarrassed by the references to paint in a blog where there are practically no paintings. You see I have called myself a painter for over 15 years, but shortly after starting this blog I just stopped painting. Lots of reasons, and none. Just stopped. And it's true - I love paint!

"He's a Suitor"

To my relief my desire to paint has been building up for the last few weeks and finally spilled out of me, onto the pallet and then onto the canvas. I have been inspired by William Kentridge (no I will never stop mentioning him!) and wanted to have a go at Goccoing on the canvas too. These three paintings are the result, silver gocco prints of pattern combined with acrylic paint, ink, collage and real silver-leaf.

"Helping Hand"

I combined my own drawings with those from the books "The Wide World Story Book for Girls" (1937) and "Ideal Book for Boys" (no date but similar vintage). Oh, the risks one takes in the name of art!

"The White Glove"

In this one I used the old pages of "Complete French Course" and "Electricity in the Home - Teach Yourself Guide" to create the tones and form of the face. Acrylic paints in silver and reds allow the guy I saw in the coffee shop one day to come alive on the canvas.

"Under Influence"

With these 4 paintings I've re-opened a new department in my creative life and a whole new section in my Etsy shop. They're all available if you like them enough!

The Sydney Biennale Part II

What does it mean when I forgo seeing the prime work of my creative hero? I went to Sydney at Biennale time to see the work of William Kentridge, specifically the exhibition Telegrams from the Nose at Annandale Galleries. While not a Biennale event in itself the exhibition had been timed to support Kentridge’s work that was the Biennale ‘highlight’ at the Cockatoo Island exhibitions. William Kentridge has enthralled me ever since I first ‘discovered’ him at the MCA several years ago. I’ve seen as much of his work as is possible here in Australia, quite some distance from his homeland, South Africa.

This visit to Annandale Galleries I saw his stationary movie - the viewer moves not the image, his stereographs - prints viewed through eyeglasses that develop amazing 3D depth, and an animation - images drawn in charcoal on paper are erased and redrawn to create movement and tell the story. I was elated.

The day to go to Cockatoo Island dawned. Yes, it was cold and a little drizzly, but would I let that stop me? No, I let the word ‘Island’ stop me. My seasickness is legendary. I’ve been sea sick in a dugout canoe on a sea that was a flat as glass, on a boat on a river, and once on a yacht I jumped overboard and swam to shore to get away from it. I know from first hand experience why they don’t have guns on boats because on a 2 hour cruise I would have gladly chosen death over the final hour of unbearable … (I won’t use words!) I let a 30 minute ferry ride defeat me.

Currently I’m going through a period of stretching my limits both artistically and personally. Why did I choose physical comfort over William Kentridge’s best? I like to think it has something to do with being true to myself and a possible beginning of the end of my insatiable need to consume others art in desperate search for inspiration. Do I detect a settling acceptance of my own inspiration from within?

This post was written as my second post to Eric Maisel Creativity Central. Many others with interests in a wide range of creative pursuits write for Eric's blog. Check it out regularly for your creativity fix!

Llft and se

I had the opportunity to choose a selection of great work for an Etsy Treasury today. I chose some fellow Etsy Dust Street Team members, some friends I've met online and just a few from my list of favourite items on Etsy. Click this link to see the Treasury live on Etsy (only available until August 2, at 8.54pm Etsy time). It takes a little while for the screen to load but it is worth the wait because then you can click on the items and see larger images and info and even buy them if you want. Take special note of ninox's Mole Knight (bottom R). Oh, I just may as well put links to most the lovelies here:
Emma, Kate and her 11 year old son, Janey, melanie, Esta, Shannon, Rob, and Vivian.

ps See the name of the treasury? "Llft and se". I wonder what that means? Well, as I made it up I can actually tell you what it means... It means the phone rang while I was doing it and after several typos I got panicked and pressed enter! It is the one thing in Treasuries that cannot be changed - of course.

My True Self Revealed

A bit of fun

Considerate Creator

Do you agree?
Do your own at http://personaldna.com/

So close I think I'm there

Here are the Moleskine exchanges I've been working on that have brought me just about up to date. This one is in Melissa's moleskine and is part of Moly_x_25. There is no theme for her book but I took my lead from Clare's turtle and made mine a water image too with a local flavour added to the exotic wave inspired by Hokusai by including the South Solitary Island and it's lighthouse that can been seen from my beach.
For moly_x_portrait 1 I made a little book to attach inside the front cover as my 'sign-in' page. Each participant in the exchange will draw a quick self portrait in this book. Each page is cut into 3. At the end of the exchange it should be quite a fun little book to see.


For this exchange I drew my self portrait. It now goes on to the next person who draws themselves and me (from photos). And on it goes.

...closer and closer...

I realised I didn't clearly explain the title of the previous post. It's there but you have to read each sentence to get it. What I'm getting closer to is being caught up on some of the projects I've let wait.

And wait. And wait. What is this procrastination? What is the resistance? I struggle procrastination and resistance continually. I'm hung up on knowing they will be perfect before I start which is ridiculous because they are never perfect in the end, so why do they have to be perfect at any point?

But it's not 9am yet and I have gesso all over me, in my hair, everywhere. Gesso is one of my all time favourite art materials. So simple, but I love it's off white toothy brushy texture and the way it interacts with what comes before and what will come over it. So this is my desk this morning. I'm putting it up on flickr so I can annotate all the gesso that's there and my other favourite art supplies too.

Now I'm off to have coffee with Sara Bowen and I'm really looking forward to it! We live very close to each other and have met a few times, but our friendship has grown online. I'm having a bit of an online-relationship time this week. Yesterday I met up with another lady who I met here in the virtual world. It is really interesting.

My man asks "Why can't I meet up with any of the women I meet online?"

I think I'm getting closer...

I finished my print of the cute little brown-eyed beagle Suzette. She is right in the middle of her dinner dance. She is disguising her power with delicate curls and gold and silver embelishments, but don't be fooled! She has you in her power and she will get exactly what she wants and when she wants it!
I printed Suzette with three Gocco screens and then overprinted with my current favourite - dance steps - in gold.
A flourish that I drew and then printed in silver just finishes her off.

And speaking of finishing... my plan for today is to finish off the Moleskine pages for the exchanges I'm in and get stuck into my other collaboration with ninox.

And speaking of ninox, she tagged me again!
Thanks Jenn! How nice! I think you are brilliant too but I can't give it to you because you've already got it. So here's what happens now...

The rules of accepting are as follows:

1) Put the logo on your blog

2) Add a link to the person who awarded you.

3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs.

4) Add links to those blogs on yours.

5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

So here are mine..

I Linda at Freyed Edge. I love her blogs subtitle and the diverse and interesting content.
II Hanna at iHanna. She shares some good web finds and her journal book is on my wish list.
III New blogger Jennelaine at On This Side of Things might be new but her blog is interesting and she draws maps!
IV Walter Logeman as finished his thousand sketches and is still creating.
V Christine at Yarn about Yarn does yarn about yarn and also yarns about some other really cool creative stuff.
VI Karina at Magic Jelly. Everything over there is yummy!
AND (you know how in movies and TV shows after they run through all the fabulous stars they have another one to blow your mind and they are listed after 'AND' - well this is that kind of 'AND')
VII Sara from Double Elephant, The Daily Drawing and Complicities. How does she do it all? I guess I have to choose just one of hers so I'm going with Double Elephant.

Well, what a round up! I hope you all enjoy this little bit of link love. Oh, and Suzette in 'Dinner Dance' is available now in The Little Shop of Horus if you just love her.

Edited 17th July
I forgot to add the image of the original painting I did of this cute little beagle. You may notice that in the painting I tried to show her dastardly side by emphasising those cute little bumps on her head, making the shadows of them just a little more prominent... they almost look like devils horns...

Creativity Central

I've been busy since I got back from Sydney. I'm working on a new dog print, this time with a beagle as the star.
I'm also making a quilt. It is my second ever quilt and it is satisfying my need to sew at the moment. I don't sew much these days as I find it sucks up so much of my time, but I love sewing, it's just that I'm not that good at it. Anyway, this quilt has a greater level of difficulty than my first one and I'm loving being immersed in the 1930's reproduction prints I've chosen. Colour and pattern! I'm happy.
I'd also like to draw your attention (again!) to Eric Maisel and this time to his newly vamped up blog Eric Maisel Creativity Central. He has set up this blog as a place where we can get our info fix about creativity with Eric Maisel and his guest blog correspondents from around the world writing on creativity, creativity coaching, and the creative life. I'm thrilled and honoured to say that I am one of the blog correspondents. In fact my previous post here (on the Sydney Biennale) was also my first post on Creativity Central. From here on, every week or two I will post an article about the art world in coastal NSW and my own creative journey. I will also be posting the same article here, but if you click on over you can read the very interesting articles from people all around the world who write, compose, paint, dance, draw and watch TV! As the blog develops it will have photos (it's hard for me without them!) and imbeded links. There are even bigger plans for it down the track, so keep an eye on it and make sure you scroll down - there is heaps there already.

But wait, there's more news! Today has seen the unveiling of www.janallsopp.com.au
It is still under construction at the moment, so it is another thing that will develop in the future. Right now it can take you to my shop and here to my blog. It will gain gallery and information pages as it grows. I'd like to thank my friend Melanie Cook for all her patient assistance in getting the site up.

There is plenty more happening here today and this week, but more about that later. Have a great day!

Biennale of Sydney - Part I

The Sydney Biennale is full steam ahead at the moment and I travelled the 570 kms to see it. I’ve seen some past Biennales and found them largely inaccessible with only the odd beacon of light to show my brain, eyes and heart the way. I’m not sure if this years Biennale just seems better to me or if it actually is. I’ve got a few more years stored below deck and my studies are drawing maps in my thinking, but my companions on board were equally thrilled with our discoveries as we navigated the waters of several art galleries.

OK, even I think that’s enough with the maritime metaphors! What’s so watery about the Biennale anyway? Well, for the first time the best of the best of the Biennale are exhibited on Cockatoo Island, the largest island in Sydney Harbour which has been an imperial prison, industrial school, reformatory, gaol and shipyards and now a heritage site. The fact that the art works have been set up in several locations on the island adds to the idea that visiting is like an exploration expedition across the water and into the unknown.

If no man is an island, Australia certainly is. We are a long way from just about everywhere. In the past the artistic distance has been almost untraversable; three months on a ship meant only a small percentage of Australians viewed key works ‘in the flesh’. Air travel has meant many of us have now seen the real Mona Lisa but it is still 24 hours on a plane and many thousands of dollars to do so. Consequently most of my art education, and many other Aussie’s, has been primarily from books. So imagine how I felt seeing Duchamp’s first Ready-made Bicycle Wheel. It looks like he made it yesterday! Beautiful. At the Art Gallery of New South Wales I also saw works by other names I’d only read about before: Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, Jean Tinguely and learned to love many new-to-me artists, especially Gianni Colombo and his Elastic Space. I was swimming in a sea of conceptual art ideas. I literally drowned (ok, not literally, but it seemed so) in the video work of an artist whose name I’m sorry to say I can’t recall. [Out of time. Going to Cockatoo Island tomorrow.]

[Overnight rain, cocktail party. Slow morning start.] The ferry to Cockatoo Island leaves from in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art at The Rocks which turns out to also be the venue for the Aroma Festival: Chocolate, Coffee and Spice on that day. The whole area was packed when we arrive so we retreated into the MCA first. The island could wait an hour or two.

The very first work you see as you enter is Leon Ferrari’s Western Christian Civilisation which I suspect the organisers where hoping would be controversial and drive the entrance numbers up. I was looking forward to seeing it. The thing I love most about art is its ability to communicate ideas and concepts that are either difficult to describe in words, or impossible. Ferrari’s Christ crucified on a scaled replica of a US FG 107 fighter plane had done just that to me when I viewed photos in books. Disappointingly not so when I saw it as it was hung so badly that all meaning and interest is immediately diffused.

Maurizio Cattelan’s Novecento did the reverse, with its materials list “leather, rope, horse” it is strangely affecting. It is in the same room with some hanging wooden sculptures, which I actually saw some people carelessly bump their heads into as they made their way to a wall exhibit. No one could approach the horse in this manner. I saw people determined to walk under it as it dangled at a great height. Unable to do so, they tried again with their eyes tightly closed, still unable to desecrate the life force around this powerful taxidermied body. Another great pleasure was spending time (not enough time, never enough time) with two Alexander Calder mobiles, one black, one white. I could have watched the elegantly unfolding motion of the white mobile for many, many hours but Cockatoo Island called.

Outside the Aroma festival had flourished into an odorous crush. The queue for the ferry was long and the time remaining until it closed was short. [Plenty of time for Cockatoo Island tomorrow.]

To Be Continued.

Biennale! Biennale! Biennale!

The Biennale of Sydney calls and I must answer.

*sings* *dances* *cheers* *screams* *dances* *sings*

Usually I don't get all that excited by the Biennale but this year I am! And I'm going for a week! And I head off tomorrow!

But why so much excitement this year? Well, there is Marchel Duchamp and Alexander Calder. Really that is almost enough. But there is also Joseph Beuys and even some living artists! But actually even this doesn't require this level of excitement.
What I am really excited about is seeing the William Kentridge exhibition at Annandale Galleries and on Cockatoo Island. Now, straight away, click over onto the Annandale Galleries site and have a really good look. Yep, that's what you will be missing out on if you don't get away from this screen and get there! Just because I know how hard it is to actually leave the internet at times, I've put some images of the Kentridge exhibition here to start your blood pumping.
Isn't he brilliant! My guess is you can see why he is my favourite living artist!

Two for Taking

In a recent post about my progress on my artist book I mentioned that I layered the lino prints over gocco prints. The gocco print I've titled Thoughts.

I've printed it alone onto these Moleskine Cahiers. The busy drawings in the Gocco print look fabulous printed in soft grey ink against the black covers. I printed each one with a different section of the screen so each one is unique.
And now it seems I just can't leave lino alone. I've been printing away with my new handpress. I originally made his particular lino block for another artist book. Naked, I also discovered, looks great on Moleskine covers.
I've only printed two of these and both of them I also used a different part of the block, so each one these is unique too. (I'll have to show you the other one another day.)
Both of these are available in my Etsy shop now.

Two for Tea

I know I've shown my cup prints before, but I have such a lot of fun changing each one a little when I hand colour them, and this is the first Cards and Cup Converge print that I've coloured with these colours, caramel, cream and strawberry.
These two cup images vie for my number one favourite position. It usually comes down to do you like cards or pattern best? I don't know. I think I've just chosen the cards over the fabric patterns simply because they have faces and therefore make a better avatar.
This is also the first time I've used this colour scheme on Fabric and Cup Converge. Purple and indigo - ahh, how nice. I've been building up my shop lately, adding more as often as I can. These two prints are listed now. And I've got more newies to add soon.

5 Favourites

Jenn (ninox) tagged me! I haven't done a tag for a long time, but it is always a lot of fun, and when I saw it was to list 5 favourite things, well... of course!

Also it is a coincidence because last night I finished my entry into Clare's Moleskine as part of Moly_x_25, and she has set the Moly's theme as "a few of my favourite things!" In my drawing I just drew 4 favourites - my dog Roly, my coffee, my books and pattern.

For Jenn I think I might have to add another. I guess it would have to be...
this is hard...
Ok, I have it...
One of my favourite things is saying "I don't believe in favourites!"

I usually say this just before I say what my favourite for that split second is. I change my mind a lot.

Do I have to tag someone else? I don't think it's a law, so I'm going to let it slide.

Artist book emerging slowly

I've done the printing for my marquette for the artist book I'm working on. I am not sure about some aspects of the prints and will definitely do some more tests. But these ones will be good to sew into a book form, experimenting with how it might be.
I played around with ghost prints of the lino prints. I used my handpress again. I'm getting used to it. Actually, I don't need to press very hard at all, which is great, although I have actually bent one of the bars when I was thinking I needed to put some real effort into it. I didn't think it would be possible. I guess it shows just how powerful a lever can be. These prints also have some underprinting with Gocco.

And speaking of sewing it together - look what my very generous, supportive and talented man made for me! A sewing frame!
I've never used one, so this will be interesting. He used the plan of Keith Smiths in his books.
He made some slight alterations to Smiths plans and I think it will work very well... assuming I can work it that is.