Weekend Success

Well I certainly bit off almost more than I could chew on Friday. Having taught all day I needed to leave at 4 p.m.on the dot to get home, changed, fed and teenagers sorted before attempting to catch a train into Newcastle to be picked up my my other half to go onto the Biscuit Factory preview.

Then two very nice Scottish ladies arrived inot the studio at 3.30 in the middle of my class (we alway welcome visitors even if a class is on). They wanted to purchase one of Rebecca's prints - no rapid exit at 4.

I got home at 4.35, shot into the shower, flung my face on, a fresh set of clothes, saw to it the kids had plans for the evening and food - got to the station with seconds to spare. No food for me though so other half kindly obliged by getting me an ASDA salad to eat in the car when he picked me up from the station.

Biscuit Factory was buzzing! Good display of my work on the wall with a heartening sight of a couple in deep conversation about the merits of one of my prints. The woman got another version of the print out of the browser and set off to the cash desk. Shortly afterwards she and her partner returned and put it back! However, the sales desk was in fact so mobbed on Friday night and sales were made over the weekend.

Meanwhile on Saturday and Sunday we opened our own studio as part of the Hearth Christmas Open Studio. I had low expectations given how poorly I did on the summer Art Tour but to my delight I sold several prints on Saturday. Sunday sales were mainly small items and the weather was positively horrendous. Nevertheless by the end of the weekend over 200 visitors had come through. Not bad for just AA signage and e-mailing lists.

Final Autumn Friday Workshop

Well last Friday was the final one in a set of four on collagraphs and drypoint. All four students made significant progress and truned out some lovely work. Here is a selection of Marion Prentice's prints - she was prolific and the more she did the more possibilities came to the fore. She had two plates, a collagraph plate and a dry point alluminium plate. She experimented with the printing order, the colours, cutting the collagraph plate up and on and on it went.

Sylvia Lynch was working on a collagraph/drypoint plate on aluminium (one plate) for a Little Red Riding Hood illustration. I only photographed the proof unfortunately but te subsequent prints were coming along nicely. The image on the right is a plate Sylvia made in a previous workshop which she was attempting to print again and improve on. Although it was a lovely plate she was strugglining with the lack of sufficient detail in either texture or line work to get e successful print but will be back for supported sessions to complete it.

These are Ann Bayliss's plates - the collagraph one and the drypoint one in progress. And finally, Neil Pont - applying ink to his drypoint plate followed by the first proof of his drypoint plate. It went through various other transformative stages after this proof and a print using both the collagraph plate with the drypoint plate. Again more work was done to the collagraph plate not recorded here.

Low on postings

I've been a bit remiss posting anything in the last week or so. I haven't been feeling that great. Very tired, low on energy and feeling like my brain is in fog so finding it difficult to focus. The Christmas exhibition at The Biscuit Factory opens on Friday then open studios at The Hearth on Saturday and Sunday. After that I'm off to see my mum in Dublin with a few days in Athlone provided we don't get washed away in the floods!!

Friday workshop

Today was day 2 of my 4 day Friday workshops on drypoint and carborundum workshops. Neil Pont came in with some really lovely prints and plates he has made on holiday at a French studio near Montpelier. He also brought in a sample of 'drypoint' card. I don't think I've seen this before but he managed to get some very nice results from it so we had 'show and tell' from him and Marion Prentice before we got started proper.

By the end of the day Sylvia Lynch had proofed her lovely plate, Anne Bayliss had trouble with her carborundum an dso in the end she printed the drypoint plate with some monotype (as did Marion) whilst they waited for their plates to dry again. Marion's drypoint plate was particularly successful. Images in the morning.

Exhibition images

And here is a selection of exhibition images. the rest are on Flickr which you can see if you follow the link on the page

Christmas Cards

Here are a few images of my christmas cards. Most were out of focus so I will have to re do them but here's a taster

Photo Etching - getting reaquainted

Rebecca and I had a rare day together in the studio today re-aquainting ourselves with photo etching. Previously one of our most popular courses when we used to run them from The University Of Newcastle's Fine Art Print department until they decided they no longer wanted 'visiting lecturers' cluttering up their space. No dark room, no exposure unit - we were snookered.

It has taken nearly 2 years to find an affordable exposure unit that doesn't require a dark room and fits our limited storage in the studio. Then one day Rebecca found one on the internet (for £60 ... yes that's right £60). I think you can pay well over £1000.

Today we were practicing based on some initial tests Rebecca had done on exposure times. Between us we will continue to practice and fine tune the exposure times in preparation for the course we are running in the spring.

Started Teaching Again

This Friday saw the start of my Drypoint and Carborundum course over 4 Fridays. 4 people enrolled - a nice small group to work with in the studio. Three of them are returning students, Anne Bayliss, whose been coming for many many years, Sylvia Lynch, an illustrator who comes on our courses for relaxation and Marion Prentice who is also an extremely talented artist who works in many media. Neil Pont is the 'new boy', a retired head teacher who is also a painter.

The course is new for me as it is for them, I've been experimenting with combining drypoint with my carborundum collagraphs and the ideas featured a few days ago on my blog are also for combining the two print media. It's important to try and keep things fresh in teaching the workshops not only forme so I don't get board but also to offer something new and interesting to existing students in order that they feel they are stretching themselves when they keep coming back. It's a challenge to ensure that what I'm teaching will work equally well with complete novices. In a group of 4 people it is quite easy to do.

Sketching out ideas

I seem to spend my life with ideas swirling round and round in my head until I don't know if I'm Arthur or Martha. Now that the work for the Christmas exhibition at The Biscuit Factory is just about in the bag I have to start almost straight away to think about work for the Spring exhibition.

I have a rough timeline worked out. I've never worked like this before so I don't know if it will help or hinder my creativity however yesterday I started to put some of those ideas downon paper as thumbnail sketches. Here they are. I like one or two. Others need further thought, all need carefull thought as to how to go about achieving the best end result.

IF these ideas bear fruit I have a very strong basis for a good body of work. The plan is to work all these up as plates first then begin printing them methodically in January. If anyone has an opinion on any of the ideas I'd welcome the feedback.