Getting light-headed

Now that I'm mastering CP (ha, ha), I chose a portrait of a beautiful dark-skinned youth from this weekend's drawing event over at wetcanvas.com . I did not do the boy justice, but I think I got a feel for forming a face out of colour. I used yellow and pink for the light parts and indigo and indian red for the dark parts, throwing all my earth colours in between. I liked doing his hairstyle, too, with all those braids.

A lemon says it all

I'm trying to get into a new medium, coloured pencil. I bought 12 Faber-Castell Polychromos in a set and then bought 12 more colours from stock. They do have 120 in total, so I will keep adding. More important, though, was the purchase of a book "for the serious beginner" by Bet Borgeson. She explains very thoroughly how to deal with CP, like mixing colour, shading and intensifying it. I'm learning loads of stuff. Although I have been painting most of my life, I always feel shy about colours and usually tend to dull vivid colours down, so that in fact I could just as well have worked in black and white (maybe that's why I like printmaking so much). One lesson I learned: Forget about local colour. I was sketching this lemon trying to make it three-dimensional, and I used much more blue, green, brown and red on it than actual yellow.

Update

I had neither time nor inspiration for art this summer, but now that the weather is announcing fall, I like to sit on my working desk again. I bought energy-saving daylight bulbs for the lamps there, so I can work even if it's dark outside (before, it was hard to judge colours in the lamplight). Haven't done any printing so far, but joined some weekend drawing events again on wetcanvas. Here are the results:

"Castle Island", watercolour, abstracted from a photograph taken in Scotland.
"Brother Dan", a portrait sketch with red chalk from a photograph.
"Green tomatoes", my first try at coloured pencils (I bought a set of 12 colours and some additional greens of Faber Castell Polychromos, so I can only do green stuff so far :-)
"Polperro", a quick sketch after a photograph taken in Cornwall. Will maybe end up printed, but I had no time for planning and cutting linoblocks so far.

Printed

This is what I did in my printmaking weekend class.
The motive stems from a photograph I took while cycling in Bavaria last September. It's the entrance portal of a baroque church situated in a town called Kallmünz.
The print is roughly 30x22 cm, plywood. The outline of the roof and tower have been cut out with a fretsaw, so the sky could be printed separately. It's a reduction print in four stages, printed with water-based inks. What I liked most about the wood was it's ability to soak in the colour, so that the woodblock is kind of like a piece of art in itself.

Printing Class

Months ago, I enrolled myself for a printing class, which is finally taking place. I did a woodcut of a church today (from a photograph I took during a vacation). It will be a suicide print - I actually like those. The basic colour is yellow, and I want to add several more layers of yellowish tones. I sawed the sky from the church outline, so I can print the sky in a different colour.
The class will continue tomorrow and I left all the stuff in the workshop, so I can't show anything today. But I set myself the goal of exploring the colour yellow in my next efforts.
With a friend, I want to go plein air painting next weekend, and since canola is blossoming all around us, those paintings will be yellow, too...

Not much printing going on, but...

... constantly thinking about it.
My time for art is limited by my job and my relationship, so I have usually more plans for prints than actual prints. I also gave up on the idea of printing editions if I don't really need them - having one good print is enough.
To me, the process of creating a print is far from being a routine, I'm still learning, trying out new stuff, different approaches. This is why I found Annie's blog so interesting today.
See: http://woodblockdreams.blogspot.com/2006/03/find-wood.html
Maybe it's time I open my mouth on the baren list and tell about my working process.

Artwise, I'm wrapped up in quilting - so to speak - still working on two Christmas gifts, patchworked and quilted sofa pillows.

Experiment: Circle block

This is a very small, rough cut and uncleanly printed experiment, but I guess you can see where I'm heading. New motives are evolving from this.

How nice it would be

to be a able to do art each day. How I would be able to develop my art as well as myself! Alas, so it is not. A job and some very dear people come first, and often there is no time left for art. Especially not for printing, which takes up a lot of time.
BUT there is always time for thinking about art and developing new ideas in my mind. I collect them and get back to them when I do have the leisure.
Like this one, which started out as a vague idea and took on shape in a sleepless night. Inspired by Rubik's cube, I made a design of a cube that could be printed with one block in three colours, simply by turning the block 120 degrees for each new colour.

Giraffe, plaice and five senses

All linoprints in black on Gutenberg paper, the giraffe 8x8.5", the plaice (fish) 9x10", "Five senses" 8x7".
I try to do larger formats now so I can work more detailed. Hope you like it.

Ordering party

I had fun yesterday afternoon with two friends, ordering supplies from Gerstaecker catalogue. I decided to concentrate all my efforts in printing this year, because other means of creating images will only sidetrack me. So I ordered some stuff to help me make better prints, like a larger brayer, a baren, professional ink etc. I'll keep you updated on my experiences.
But first I want to show what I have done so far this year - already three prints, although two still need some working on the plate!
Ideas for other prints abound, however before I can actually start, I have to finish some Christmas presents of the quilting kind.