The Autobiographia Boxes

I've been working these last few weeks on these little boxes as a kind of autobiography - bits of old work combined with precious odds and sods that have travelled with me over the years, collected pieces and gifts.  The print is one of the little series of gelatin plates I did a while ago reflecting on the wild undergrowth in my garden and the ivory bird and bead came from an incense burner that was given to me over 40 years ago, by an uncle who had travelled to Australia in the 1920's via what was then Ceylon. He is long dead but the memories and wonderful tales he told of his life as a wandering musician linger on

I like the smallness of the work - 2inches square

Re-Post Gelatin II - For Buried Treasure Collaborative

I've had a couple of entirely sensible questions about what do you do with the gel plates once you have them in your hot little hands!

Here was the subsequent post I made in October last year, which hopefully gives you an idea of how to print from them.  Many of the images on the blog have been taken from straight monoprints using gelatin plates or manipulating the image using Adobe or Gimp software. (e.g., Previous Posts - Meditations is a monoprint, Bye Bye Birdy is a digitally manipulated print using the same bird template and some textured wallpaper samples I got from the local hardware store).  Really interesting to experiment with paper shapes, leaves, string, paper bags etc., you do start to see possibilites all around you!  And to overprint and see what happens with the combined images and colours.
 
Final image
Gel plate with impressions left by placed objects

First print taken
Inked up gel plate with assorted items laid on top

Just figured out how to load multiple images! Not too sure why it has loaded in reverse order but here is some of the output from the day - the gel plate (bottom image)was first inked up using water based printing inks and a roller, then I laid a variety of stuff on top of the inked plate - ribbon, leaves, bit of lace, rubber bands. I placed a sheet of cartridge paper over the top and gently hand rubbed the back of the paper to obtain the first print. No need to go mad here just a smoothing over the back of the paper really.

Then I removed the items and placed a second sheet of cartridge paper over and gently rubbed the back of the paper to pick up the imprinted images left on the gel.



I have used 130g cartridge paper for this print.

Re-Post for Buried Treasure Collaborative - Making a Gelatin Plate

As part of a collaborative with New York Artist Seth Apter' and his blog The Altered Page, I am re-posting 'Making a Gelatin Plate'.  The idea is to air a previous post that you particularly liked. The participating artists can be found from July 15th over at The Altered Page blog under the title Buried Treasure.  A celebration of the work of  the many, many online artists we love to browse.

I think it's probably one of the most useful posts I made over the year for other artists and probably the one which sparked the most interest on my blog.  It was also a good point for my work, as it began to travel down many mixed media avenues and on all kinds of artistic journeys that I could not have imagined; say 2 years ago.

A week on holiday got me thinking about gelatin prints again. I really got into this last year and posted about it at the time but felt that there was more work to be done here and that I could also use the prints with my stock of digital images. There was very little information online at the time; there is a little bit more now I notice, but it was enough to get me started.

The drawback was the time it took to make the plates and the fact that the gel broke up quite quickly - you would just get to the point where you were making progress and it was getting interesting and the cracks would appear.

So for those interested in this here is the latest recipe for the gel plate shown above.

Makes a plate about 8x10 inches and 1/2 inch deep

1 Pack Dr Oetker Gelatin (contains 6 sachets)
1 pint water at room temperature

Kiddies plasticine or clay
Plexi-glass sheet or reinforced glass (not picture frame glass, far too fragile)

Newspaper torn into strips

Put water in pan and slowly add all 6 sachets one by one and stirring slowly with wooden spoon.  I mean slowly! When you have added all the gelatin powder heat slowly and stir constantly to dissolve the gelatin and then leave to cool down a little.

Whilst that is cooling make a dam with the plasticine or clay on your plexi-glass. I previously used a tin tray but this is much better and you can make any size and shape you want. Just make sure it is pressed down onto the support and there are no areas that will leak.

Pour the gelatin slowly into the mould you have created and skim the surface with strips of newspaper to get rid of any scum and bubbles on the surface.

Leave for about an hour and a half in a cool place to set. ( I left it in the studio - it really does not need a fridge) Until it feels firm to touch.

Use sharp knife to cut right down onto the plexi-glass or glass and carefully remove the plasticine dam.

(This beats the previous recipe where you had do all kinds of stuff and then leave it in the fridge for 12 hours)

And the plate is ready to use...

Meditations

It occurred to me that rather than constantly trying to come with something new, I already have so many disparate bits of work here in the studio and it might be a good idea to collect these moments of creativity together and see what happens.

So I am using them to make a kind of meditative journal as a beginning  and just see what happens along the way.  I also think it will work into Artist's books and a couple of other schemes I am hatching. 

...and probably more Birdy for a while.

Bye Bye Birdy

Made some more gelatin prints today using one of the bird stencils and helped myself to some wallpaper samples from the local hardware store to use for the borders - they may soon become suspicious of my constant sampling and non-purchase of a whole roll.

I have been experimenting (last couple of post images and this one) with using curves in GIMP (or Adobe) which is quite interesting, particularly when using the 'freehand' tool and throws up all kinds of nuances that aren't always obvious in the original print.

I have called this Bye Bye Birdy - its probably time to give birds a rest and move on.

Fine weather and gel prints

I took refuge in the studio today, away from the heat and got down to the business of making art and a bit of a Spring clear out too - well not so much a clear out, more a shuffle.  You know the kind of thing - anything to avoid starting!  It's the first really warm weather we have had but I'm happier in the shade.  Off to London tomorrow for a couple of days and hopefully some gallery viewing.  After that I hope to have some more time in the studio and develop ideas that have been brewing since Australia.  And more time for this poor neglected blog.

The image here is one of 15 small prints (10cm x 10cm) I began in February - I wanted something very simple to give an impression of looking closely at tiny seed heads in the undergrowth.  I am now manipulating the images using GIMP or Adobe to see if I have sufficient for another Artist's book.

Went to collect some slumped glass from the previous week's session - it had not survived the firing and had shattered.  Tried another batch with fingers crossed.

Dreamtime

Back from my travels and finding it hard to get back into the swing of things - not sure what I actually want to swing from.  Great time in Australia and wonderful to see art from a different perspective.  

I was particularly interested in the aboriginal concept of Dreamtime and quote from Wikipedia (Fred Alan Wolf from his book The Dreamtime):-

"Aboriginals believe in two forms of time; two parallel streams of activity. One is the daily objective activity, the other is an infinite spiritual cycle called the 'dreamtime', more real than reality itself. Whatever happens in the dreamtime establishes the values, symbols, and laws of Aboriginal society. It was believed that some people of unusual spiritual powers had contact with the dreamtime."'

That sounds better than any description that I could have come up with.  The little sketch here is something from my travel sketchbook.  My own Dreamtime - the whole experience has left me with so many ideas and an uncertainty of how to express them just now. 

This week has seen me at Westhope College playing with some glasswork, another area I have been wanting to try for quite a while.  Making a few sample pieces before I tackle any cathedral windows.

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.