Plum Blossoms

Hello Friends

I have been quite busy during the time that I haven't been blogging. I did a number of woodcut prints last year. The last one was a pretty little print of plum blossoms. I made quite a few prints for framing and a lot for cards. The background was hand painted so took a little time.

Plum Blossoms, woodcut with hand colouring, Karr, 2014

I also participated in a small print exchange earlier in 2014. Only 18 participants thank goodness. I am not used to doing editions bigger than 5 or 10 (except for Christmas card illustrations) and it is hard to keep the quality up. I originally made the exchange print as a very personal gift for a friend of a friend whose husband had just died.  But I liked the effect of an inkjet transfer background with the message printed in black over so much that I used it for the exchange.

ink jet transfer background, woodcut print edition of 22, Karr 2014

I had entries in a few Waikato Society of Arts shows as well. And went looking at a lot of shows in big galleries and small places. One that I really enjoyed was a posthumous show of a selection of Stan Boyle's prints-- some done here and some done in China. He really loved his time in China. That show was at David Lloyd's little private gallery.

Just the other day I went to see Kate Hill's show at Artspost. It was called Place Marks and was an exploration of all the things she loves about her property, the foliage and birds, done in monoprints, woodcuts, collages, and paintings.   Being familiar with her work I could see the progression from her previous pieces to these new lovely pieces. 

Rabbits by Fiona Tunnicliffe 2014

Fiona working on a ceramic sculpture

At the same time at Artspost this month I really enjoyed a display of the work of ceramic sculptor Fiona Tunnicliffe. The show was called Edward's Companions. I assumed she was referencing Edward also known as Teddy Bear. Great reasonably large in most cases, animals. Great sense of humour as you can see by her titles eg. Houndstooth puppy, Chair with Crocodile, How to Cook a Hare.

Mad Dog Bad Dog, monoprint using a Gellipad, 

Karr 2014

You can look at more of the work by these New Zealand artist by looking them up on Google.

Knitting

SHARING SOME CRAFT WORK

I have been pursuing my art interests during the hiatus in posts. But something else I have been doing is a little knitting.

I more or less stopped knitting several years ago partly because I have arthritis in my wrists and partly because I was putting all my time into the art course at The Learning Connexion.

In the past year, though, I have taken up my needles and knitted some small projects-- several pairs of two needle bed socks, finished a small child's cardigan I had started 5 years ago, and four scarves.

Three of the scarves were knitted from that novelty ribbon type yarn that gives you a ruffled scarf while the fourth was from cotton yarn.

I scanned the scarf. On the right I stretched it so you could see the stitches

I was quite pleased with the fourth scarf and am giving you the pattern that I devised.

Sparkle Scarf

This is a long scarf in black, grey and a paler grey yarn with sequins.

You need 1x fifty gram ball each of black cotton, grey cotton and paler grey and silver novelty yarn.  My knitting cotton was a cotton and acrylic mix.

Use a 5 mm circular needle. Mine has bamboo ends so the slithery yarn didn't slip off.

The finished scarf was 180 cm long and about 6 cm wide. Cast on more stitches if you want a longer scarf. You will have enough yarn to do this.

The scarf is very simple to make as it is all in knit stitch. The four rows of knit 2 together and yarn overs, to make the scarf slightly lacy, are the only parts you need to pay attention to. The only other point to note is that when knitting some rows you start from the opposite end, easy to do when you are using circular needles.

Using black cast on loosely 180 stitches,

1  black, knit to end of row, turn

2  black, knit to end of row

3  grey, start from opposite end, knit 4, (K2tog, yarn over) repeat to last 4 stitches, knit 4, turn

4  grey, knit all the stitches and yarn overs to end of row

5  fancy yarn, start from the opposite end, knit to end, turn

6  fancy yarn, knit to end

7  black, knit to end, turn

8  black, knit to end

9  grey, start at opposite end, knit 4, (K2tog, yarn over) repeat to last 4 stitches, knit 4, turn

10 grey, knit all the stitches and yarn overs to end of row

11  fancy yarn, start at opposite end, knit to end, turn

12, 13, 14 fancy yarn, knit to end of row, turn

15  grey, start at the opposite end, knit to end of row, turn

16  grey, knit to end of row

17  black, start at opposite end, knit 4, (K2tog, yarn over) repeat to last 4 stitches, knit 4, turn

18  black, knit to end, turn

19  fancy yarn, knit to end, turn

20  fancy yarn, knit to end

21  grey, start at opposite end, knit to end of row, turn

22  grey, knit to end of row

23  black, start at opposite end, (K2tog, yarn over) repeat to last 4 stitches, knit 4, turn

24  black, knit to end

Cast off very loosely using the black yarn

If you twist the yarns at the ends each time you change colour you can carry them along so the ends of the scarf are very neat.

Use a bodkin (a special wool needle) or a crochet hook to work the ends of the yarns in so they are secure and cannot be seen.

The ends of the scarf could be finished with a fringe.

Solar plate printing is a safer alternative to some other intaglio printing methods.

If only it wasn't so expensive!

In June I attended my second solarplate workshop. As with the workshop last year I was really stimulated by this relatively simple technique. (There are lots of demonstrations on line in making and printing the solarplates.)
But by the time you add in exchange rates and postage an eight by ten plate can cost $30! And add a stochastic plate and that can be another $50. Admittedly you can use the stochastic plate (used for exposing transparencies to make intaglio printing plates.) over and over.
Another problem is the difficulty in cutting the solarplates as the active gel surface has a thin piece of metal as a base.
You could also add in the cost of a UV light but free sunlight is available fairly often here so that is not a real worry.

 One of the blocks I made at the workshop was based on a photo I took years ago of some old tractors. I had fun playing around with the photo in Photoshop Elements. But eventually I cropped to one tractor and made it a black and white picture. See the top tractor picture.

A print of the tractor was copied onto a transparency. This was used to make the solarplate. The plate was first exposed to UV light with the stochastic plate next to it and then with the transparency of the tractor next to it. A heavy piece of glass was used to keep the transparency perfectly flat against the solarplate. It only takes a few minutes for this part of the process.

Once cleaned and matured I used the solarplate to make several proofs. This was intaglio printing so the ink (green in this case) was worked well into the indentations of the plate and then the plate well wiped to leave the surface clean.

The plate was printed in the intaglio manner-- plate ink side up on the press base, damp printing paper placed carefully onto the plate. More paper to protect the felts. Felts down and the whole run through the press.

Relief plates can be made without using the stochastic plate. You can mark directly on the plate with black printing ink or some pencils and markers. This needs experimenting to find out which materials totally block out the light.

Then the plate is exposed to the UV light as before. The exposed plate cleaned and scrubbed and then matured as before. But the plate is inked in the relief manner with a brayer and printed as you would normally print a relief plate. I would like to spend some time playing with making relief prints using solarplates.

Making Little Books

I had forgotten how long it can take to prepare and spent all morning putting my pictures together for this post. Then got sidetracked into deleting and rearranging emails! So it is late evening and I am back to little books.


When I am going to make one of these Flat-Style Australian Reversed Piano Hinge books I start with sourcing the paper for the pages. Cut your paper so each sheet is twice as wide as the page size you want.
Decide how many pages you want in each signature (group of pages) and how many signatures you want in your book. Each sheet will make 4 pages.

For a small book you could try 3 signatures of 3 sheets each. That would give you 4x9= 36 pages in your book.

In this diagram you see one sheet on the left, then the sheet folded to make the 4 pages.

Below is the paper for the shallow accordian or concertina that is used for binding the book.

If the pages are 15 cm high you might make the concertina 10 cm high. The length is determined by how many signatures you want in the book. The concertina shown is folded to hold 2 signatures.

 
In this diagram is a signature made of 3 sheets of paper. The sheets are folded. The position of the concertina is marked in the fold of the signature and a slit carefully cut a mm or 2 longer than the concertina.

The pleat of the concertina is carefully inserted through the slit from the back and the sheets pressed down so the paper or card pin can be inserted to hold the pages in place.Then repeat with the remaining signatures.

For this small book (15x10 cm) I prepared three signatures. I decorated the concertina with gel pens and used plain white card for the pins. You can see the pleat of the concertina with the white pin through it holding the pages in place. The pages in this style of book open very flat. I cut up an old art study project for the covers. I glued the wings of the concertina to the first and last pages of the book and then glued the covers on. Use wax paper between the part you're gluing and the rest of the book to keep it clean. Put your little book under a thick book to provided pressure to keep it flat while the glue is drying. Use wax paper around your book to protect other surfaces from the glue.

This book is bigger 18x15 cm. I used watercolour paper for the pages so only used 2 sheets of paper for each signature. I wanted 32 pages so that meant I had to have 4 signatures.

The book is larger so I used two concertinas. I could have made these entirely separate but decided I might find it easier to handle if I kept them connected.
 
The concertina was made of light card. I used strips of light card cut from an old painting project for the pins. The pins must be narrow enough to thread through the pleats but wide enough to stay in place and hold the sheets of paper firmly.

This is the first little book I made.It is 15x10 cm. I used an empty cereal box for the pins and for the covers.

I glued the wings of the concertina to the covers and then glued a decorated sheet of  paper to the cover and the first page of the book. I did the same for the back cover.

You don't have to glue the covers on the book. This book  has its pages made of sheets of ordinary A4 printer paper.

I glued the wings of the concertinas to the first and last pages. You can barely see it as the paper is white- top left.
Then I made a loose cover by folding brown kraft paper. We used to cover our school books this way when I was little. At that time we cut open brown paper grocery bags and iron them flat before folding them to make the cover.

You measure the size of the book. The cover paper needs to be  about twice as high and 4 times as wide as the book. Fold down from the top and up from the bottom so that the cover is slightly higher than the book. Then fold over about a quarter of  one side of the cover. You want to be able to insert the first page into this. Trim the cover with scissors if you folded over too much. Then close the book with the cover on the front page and fold the other side over the back page. Insert the back page into the fold. If the cover is too long trim some paper off. You can decorate your cover in a variety of ways or use paper that is already decorative.

I made the cover to fit the book and then decorated the outside with a collage of decorated paper from an old project. After drying the collage under the pressure of a big book I painted it with a good coat of PVA to protect the surface.