Journal for the Trip

I've been hunting; without success, for a good quality watercolour sketchbook and decided to make one up myself. And also wanted to continue with practising bookmaking, so it was a duel intent. Found the paper for the cover amongst some prints I made only about 8 years ago. It was worthless as a print but I'm quite happy with it is a journal cover and it has a nice heavy textured feel to it - ignorant of the ins and outs of printing ink at the time, I used acrylic paint and some linocut images layered into an abstract pattern.


I am heavy-handed with paint (watercolours usually flinch when they see me coming) and find ordinary sketchbook paper too lightweight to take a hammering.

Sydney Beckons

I did anticipate getting some work done this week but it hasn't happened. And last week I was Grandson-sitting over half-term, so it has been a couple of weeks of best laid plans going to pot. I have stopped beating myself up now and decided to go with the flow. (Flow sounds sedate but it has been more flying around like a lunatic for last minute things).

I fly out on Monday and am gathering together what I hope will be sufficient to keep me occupied and sane during the 22 hour flight - books, pens, sketchbooks, downloads - if anyone has any other ideas please let me know:(

I am really looking forward to seeing my youngest daughter and also looking at art from an Australian perspective - I hope I return full of ideas for new work in April.

I will post if I can during the trip and of course keep up with all my favourite blogs!

Madding Crowd

Just about finished the Artist's book using the gelatin prints of birds that I made back in October. I use the word finished loosely as I am not happy with several aspects of the piece, so this will probably be the prototype for something else. I spray painted the covers and found that pushing an awl through for the holes disturbed the paint - trying to rectify this with a paintbrush left rather obvious blobs on the surface. So lessons learned for the next one.

I have used Japanese stab binding.

The other piece is experimental, using an old gelatin print with some collage and chine colle. The text is taken from Gray's Elegy - there's not too much left of this little book! I am currently going through the portfolio to see what I can re-use with more layers.

Oh! the studio that was tidy two days ago is chaos once more.

Artist's Book

Bitterly cold day outside and not much better in the studio today. I needed to do a tidy out before I go to Australia at the end of the month and I wanted to spend some time working on the prints I began a little while ago with the intention of making an artist's book. (I think I posted them under 'Birds on a Wire' as a working title but think that will change).

Over the weekend I trimmed the pages and worked knots into them with some very old embroidery thread - and I do mean old. They came from some my mother had during WWII. And today I looked at some ideas for a cover - the best option at the moment is the simplest one of the stencilled bird but will look at other angles tomorrow.

I am increasingly interested in the the link between women in families and their complexities. The birds have come to represent my youngest daughter leaving home and the threads represent the continuation within this family group.