Printmaking - Relief block - Week 2

We covered more contour drawing as well as creating disposable printblocks using the black meat trays made from styrofoam, as well as stencils. Below are a couple of my prints.


I quickly did a contour drawing of a filing cabinet in the corner of the room. As you can see, when you look at the next image, not all the details showed up. We are still using a barren, as we don't have a press.


Most of the other students seem to pull something out of their imaginations. I prefer to use what I see around me.


Here you can see I started to use a rainbow roller. Even though I didn't have a good coverage of ink on the roller, resulting in a grainy look, more detail showed up, if you look at the bottom of the image the comb marks show far more clearly.



Still a little grainy, but this is the image I prefer. I used another colour combination rainbow roller. The darker colour is where it should be and I am happier with this.

Creative Writing - Week 2

Japanese poetry

Week One Arts Pathways

Drawing & Printmaking

This is the part of the course that I've been looking forward to.

On our first week, our teacher introduced the class to contour drawing & monotype printmaking.

What is contour drawing?

Contour drawing is essentially outline drawing, and blind contour drawing means drawing the outline of the subject without looking at the paper. The end result doesn't matter - what is important is carefully observing the subject.
Retrieved from http://drawsketch.about.com/cs/drawinglessons/a/contourblind.htm. 12/3/2007.

What is a monotype?

A monotype is a unique work of art usually printed from a smooth flat surface such as a sheet of plastic. The artist paints by hand the image to be printed directly on this smooth surface and then places a sheet of paper over the freshly painted surface, cranks it through a press, and so creates a one-of-a-kind work of art. Monotypes, by their nature, cannot be produced as an edition. If they are numbered at all they are numbered as 1/1 (read as "one of one"... an edition of one, in other words).
Retrieved from http://www.studio1617.com/prints.htm. 12/3/2007.

We used several different techniques.

Essentially we used a 6" soft speedball roller to apply the water soluable ink to a soft piece of printmaking lino, laid a A4 sheet of paper on top and proceeded to do a contour drawing, of leaves, on the back of what would be our print.

Fig. 1

This is what my first print looked like on the back.

Fig. 2

This is the result. As you can see, after drawing the outline, I used various implements to smudge and darken various areas. The wavy lines were created using a wide tooth comb.

Fig. 3

This print was done straight after the print in Fig. 2. It is a negative of that print. If you look carefully you will see that the light areas are where there was little or no ink left on the lino piece and the darker areas are lighter in the original.

The following are more examples of the process used above.


Fig. 4

The contour drawing.



Fig. 5

The original print.


Fig. 6

The negative print.

Week 1 Creative Writing - Clustering & Rapid writing

Creative writing isn't something I'm either comfortable with or particularly good at.

Having recently finished a unit in my course (BA Internet Studies) in which I was required to keep a blog as a learning log, I have decided to do the same for my studies on Creative writing and Certificate in Visual Arts and Contemporary Craft.

First up we covered the differing styles of thinking.

Left Brain
sequential, step-by-step, verbal, analytical, rational, time-centered, aggressive, objective, interested in details, linguistic, detects features, and

Right Brain
simultaneous, multiple, visual, synthetical, intuitive, timeless, yeilding, subjective, wants overview, musical, notices patterns

We concluded this with a test. My results were 2:3 left:right. Which is pretty much what I expected.

Clustering - Stream of consciousness

(UGLY) show - rubbish - tv - boring - read - fantasy - eddings - lawyer - brighton - tram - highway - pram - blue - dust - garage - van - trees - drought - driveway - bucket - roses - weeds - prickles - feet - sore

(NIGHT) sky - dark - blue - sparkle - clear - fresh - smell - clarity - cool - go - lino - fur - cat - pattern - orange - flame - red - purple - heat - tea


Rapid writing rules

1. keep your hand moving
2. don't cross out
3. don't worry about spelling, punctuation or grammar
4. lose control
5. don't think, don't get logical
6. go for the jugular

Rapid writing

lino cool on feet, need my slippers, need to sweep, too tired, have a tea, the taste, perfect, hot, quiet, peaceful now, quiet, so quiet, check them, relax, enjoy this time, it will be morning soon, start the daily pattern, noise, arguing, laughing, deliver them to where they go in their lives, come back to mine, meet again late, yes, join in our lives, bustle, noise, movement, frenetic, slow down for the evening, unwind, talk as friends, enjoy each others company, relax, return to being parent, remind of what they need to do, noise rises, put off with questions, what I did today, what they did today, smil at the game, or glower, slowly they settle, he settles, pause, just me, my time, another day done for them, another for me.