College – Print – Term 4 – Final Pieces

Posted on 23rd December 2012 by perfectly4med

This term in my print lessons I’ve revisited dry point – with a new twist which I hope to develop and share in due course… And then there was the lino cut – it turns out that lino is a lot easier to carve when warm, but crumbles when hot… And there was the collagraph – sticking items to a piece of card, liberally coating with PVA and allowing to dry before using it as a print plate. Part of the final project is to take prints that aren’t quite exhibition standard and embellish them a little:

Basic print

Here’s the before and after of a piece of serendipity – I was washing out my large screen with a large repeat pattern on it, and the water/ink mix was caught by the scrap paper beneath – I loved the texture and distressed colours. I embellished it with watersoluble graphite pencil and a bit of frottage on sandpaper to add texture, and a distress ink mix to tone down the white paper:

Embellished with Distress Inks

Before…

Finally, I wanted to play around with a repeat pattern on a large scale… the screen alone was two feet square – and I chose to run off a couple of lengths of wallpaper as well as a couple of multicoloured prints:

Wallpaper sample

Multicolour screen, first pass

Not sure that I’d want that repeat in black and white across the chimney breast!

College Course – Ceramics – Term 4 – Final Project

Posted on 23rd December 2012 by perfectly4med

For our final project this term, we’ve had four weeks to work on either a ceramic bird house, or a Cornell-style box. In principle, we had to slab build the box and then use at least two of the techniques we’d learnt to decorate it. I’ve gone for the Cornell-style fine art box:

Once again, all the work is based on my bead or button collection – the filigree is the back slab layered with D-shaped extrusions and then pierced (two techniques already!). The flowers are one and two part plaster moulds taken from other beads (sprig moulds, technique three). The box will dry over the Christmas break and then get fired – it’s white earthstone, and we’ll be playing with glazes next term. The box will hold vertical strings of ceramic beads, which I made by designing my own extrusion die, slicing this into uniform thicknesses, piercing and then carving (and there’s technique four):

College Course – Painting – Week 5

Posted on 3rd December 2012 by perfectly4med

I’ve just been reviewing my myriad pictures and realised I hadn’t posted my favourite painting of the session so far – it was completed before half term. We worked relatively large scale (I think this was on A3 size paper) and were encouraged to be free in our movements with the brushes. It’s painted with watersoluble inks, resisted by oil pastel outlines and highlights, and I moved the inks around after application by flooding areas with water. A bit of thinned PVA adds shine, as well as more ink movement. I think the result is rather abstract, very free, and still resembles the rose bead I was using as a reference!

College – Term 4 – Print – Collagraph

Posted on 29th November 2012 by perfectly4med

It’s collograph technique time – who would think that a few bits and pieces stuck down and flooded with dilute PVA, dried and inked could make fabulous prints? Here’s a pic of the collagraph plate after a few prints:

And here’s one of the prints:

They’re not tangle patterns… but they’re close!

Posted on 13th November 2012 by perfectly4med

Me again – I’ve survived a three day stint demonstrating and teaching at the NEC Hobbycraft exhibition, and it’s back to college and catch up time! Last week we were set loose to develop our own style in our drawing lessons, and I’ve returned to making repeating patterns from elements of my bead collection. Each of these patterns are A4 in size, in my sketchbook, and have been painted with black acrylic ink. They are all based on the same shapes which I have cut out from a preceding pattern, rearranged and then traced onto the page before block colouring. They’re not tangle patterns… but you could still use them in your zentangles…

Continue reading →

College Term 4 – Jewellery – Week 6 – Part 2

Posted on 29th October 2012 by perfectly4med

In a previous post you saw my aluminium and perspex necklace, bracelet and earring set. I also designed a second (bonus) piece using the offcuts from the perspex rings, and finished it today:

I’ve added silver wire tangles to the perspex rings. Each of the flowers were hand sawn from sheet aluminium and hammered into shape before being riveted onto the centre offcuts from the laser cut perspex rings. I’m planning to do two more flowers in the session tomorrow to complete a pair of matching earrings.

And I think I’m getting better at product photography! Rather pleased with the serendipitous lighting on this one – early morning in the conservatory with a bit of level tweaking in Photoshop. No artificial lights were used in the production of this image.

College Term 4 – Jewellery – Week 6

Posted on 20th October 2012 by perfectly4med

We’ve spent the last five weeks learning about the various ways of soldering (butt and sweat), cold joining with rivets, surface design (heat colouring, mill impressions, hammering) and playing with a laser cutter (I want one!). This week over five hours of lesson time, it was our time to make our own design – this is what I came up with:

Each of the metal discs were cut by hand from aluminium sheet, hammered to give texture, and wire brushed to make matte. I designed the acrylic flowers and circles to scale in Adobe Illustrator and these were cut from 3mm acrylic sheet on the laser cutter. They are attached to the aluminium discs using 2mm chenier tube rivets – several had to be done again as I was a little heavy handed at the beginning and cracked the acrylic. Links are commercial jump rings, as is the chain – time pressures didn’t allow me to make my own. Not that I’d know where to start making chain! I’m really pleased with the result, and aside from the laser cutting, all the techniques are feasible in a home studio.

College Term 4 – Ceramics – Week 4

Posted on 14th October 2012 by perfectly4med

Yes, I know, there’s a week or so missing from the ceramics thread – I’m waiting on some of the things I’ve been making to get fired in the kiln so you can see the before and after. This week, amongst other things, we were invited to play and experiment with extruded clay. Here’s my (unfired) tile with my experimentations:

From top, all extruded shapes:
1) Twisted trefoil
2) Square, alternating full and half-slices
3) Square, pierced and cut
4) Trefoil, pinched and dented
5) Trefoil, sliced and indented
6) Trefoil, pinched and dented
7) Square, irregular slice, end on
8) D-profile, coiled
9) D-profile, plaited
10) D-profile, stamped with biro lid and nib
11) D-profile, pressed with curved edge of serrated kidney tool.

College Term 4 – Painting – Week 4

Posted on 12th October 2012 by perfectly4med

More painting mayhem this week – this time we had to work large… very large! This painting is A1 size, with the viewframe being 4.3x3cm. I completed this in about two and a half hours, in acrylics, mixing colours from primaries and white. The rose bead and the filigree bead need a little more work, but I didn’t think it was too bad overall.

College Term 4 – Painting – Weeks 2 & 3

Posted on 12th October 2012 by perfectly4med

Well, the Mac is currently reinstalling from back up – silly me decided to do that over the network, so there’s another day to go! Meanwhile, back in real time, I took more photos of the oil paintings from week 2 (the first three) and one from week 3. Each painting is 15cm square based on a 3cm square frame of my bead collection. We were working in brown monotone, making our browns using colour theory: blue and yellow to make green, green and red to make brown, add blue to darken, yellow to lighten and be careful with the white! A small amount of the light brown mixed with white made the background cream. I reckon I was getting much better by number 4… Let me know how you think I did!