Work diary

Mon 13 August - Explorations

Here are some of the images (see above) I have started to work with. It is purely a starting point as with anything, the first idea is not necessarily the best. You have to start somewhere so I started by drawing initially from photos I had taken before I arrived.

We were working in the studios until after 11pm as the artist from Macao left today, so needed to finish her work. Anita Fung lectures in Macao and has been preparing work for a pan-Asian printmaking show to be held there. I will send some more details about her and her work later.

I have been exploring textures and using the ink that the lithography technicians have given me, along with chinese brushes and tissues (to move the ink around the plate, then working into the imagery with chinagraph pencils, I have been having a good time! I also have been thinking about combining detailed drawings with some of the textural work. The preference here (at least what I think is being communicated) is that they like detail in printmaking. The administrator did comment that he preferred this to the more abstract lithograph that the technicians printed for me this morning!

Yes first print today, as I had hoped. There is that amazing buzz when something finally makes it to the print bed and is no longer on the wall, as a sketch. Now I feel I have started at last...

This drawing was a combination of the textural ink and the precise drawing. I thought I would add pattern in quite a large area and spent some considerable time drawing it in, using a fine chinagraph pencil (an oil based pencil). Things were going ok and I went for lunch. I returned and picked up the pencil and continued until I had drawn all the texture, it gave the impression of a net curtain behind a sleeping figure. Before I completed it I tried a quick photoshop impression to see how much might work in the composition. Then I continued until it was done. When complete, I decided to put a wash over it, and washed away the half that I had done when I mistakenly picked up a water soluble wash pencil... looked the same until wet!

I always tell my students that when something is lost and you have to redo it (usually on the computer) it is quicker and often better as you have made the decisions the first time. Well yes, I redrew and I think I was happier with it the second time. I was tired though. By the time I finished it was late, but as there were other artists still working I continued and started to work into a textural ink sheet I had done earlier. As I painted back, and washed out, worked into with an oil crayon and wiped and washed and inked up again, I found this a much freer way of creating an image... so by just after 11pm I found I had the makings of my first lithographic print.

I am still looking at the compositions with the detailed drawings on the wall. They will gestate while I continue on other bits and pieces.