Eithin

Folksy

2008-08-22T00:22:00.003Z

Folksy is apparently advertised as pretty much an alternative (and UK-based) version of Etsy, which I've looked into in the past and not had enough energy to set up and try out.

Since they're in beta, though (but still open for sales & functionality), and I have a weakness for prodding websites till they break, I set up a shop there. It's here. So far all I've put up there is a couple of prints, but I'm going to add some other things soon when I have samples - I've been working on belt buckles recently, having found some good lightweight blank plate buckles at JT Batchelor's in Islington last week.

So, basically, yes, there is Stuff on sale, and (if I say so myself) at very reasonable prices. I'm also delighted to take on commissions.

Pewter-grey ribbon choker

2008-08-19T17:20:00.007Z

This is something I made for Elly, which she's quite pleased with. It's made from 10mm double-satin ribbon, fastened at the back with a tiny buckle, and the eyelets for the tongue are just punched through and edged with varnish for strength. (Mind you, I need to redo them, because this was a bit of an experiment and I've found a better method - acrylic paint then varnish) as a result.

Photos by Nick Metcalfe. All rights reserved.

New GoodnessDirect logo

2008-08-19T15:01:00.001Z

GoodnessDirect logo
Originally uploaded by Justin Fleming

Goodness Direct have decided to change their logo, and they're asking for consultation. Here's the proposed new version.

It bothers me a lot - garish and plain at the same time, with an odd variant of CMYK without the K. Green: the new black? That's an interesting idea, but I don't think it goes anywhere. Those shapes look like children's sweets, packed full of artificial colours and flavourings.

Mind you, the text portion I like - it manages to be solid & reliable, while still looking modern.

Om be praised!

2008-08-11T18:12:00.003Z

A friend asked me recently to do some concept artwork for the Church of Om, before a service to be given at the Discworld Convention - specifically, a vaguely Buddhist-style mandala. Here's the result.

Photo taken by Nick Metcalfe. All rights reserved.

Skin Coloured

2008-08-04T11:40:00.003Z

Skin Coloured is "intended to be a collaborative, visual exploration of what it is to be non-white in a white culture." I'm white myself (dark skinned, but unmistakably white), but this issue fascinates me. Racism, art & design, and usability issues all rolled into one.

They're looking for more pictures with examples, so please do drop them a line if you have any.

Lammas prints

2008-08-02T13:24:00.004Z

Yesterday was Lammas, or Lughnasadh if you prefer. It's mostly an agrarian holyday, but I was brought up a pastoralist (Welsh hill farming isn't really so concerned about the grain harvests) so the only aspect that really speaks to me is the sunlight. I started carving the block as the sunlight faded, and was printing these over midnight.

Linocut on smooth white drawing paper, and on blue rough-weave handmade paper.

This to That - glues

2008-07-26T17:17:00.003Z

Which glue to use is always a tricky problem. This to That will not only tell you which one works for a particular purpose, but why, and how to use it.

It's US-centric, but a lot of products cross over, and a bit of poking around will always find you a UK equivalent.

Piet Mondrian

2008-07-26T15:37:00.004Z

Generally, when we think of Mondrian, we think of something like this -

(Rhythm of Black Lines, c. 1935-42)

I'd had absolutely no idea that his early work was so different, and yet so similar. If you look at the brushwork and the patterns in this one (Gray Tree, 1911) -

- then there are very definitely similarities there. I'm yearning to go and look at his work in the flesh, or at least the canvas, now. Artchive has a really interesting essay on his work, explaining the progression. I love the image of artist as technocrat, and it's very much of his age.

Cartouche network

2008-07-13T16:10:00.003Z

I did this as a substrate for mixed-media pieces - specifically, I wanted one to put on the cover of my laptop. It's done from katsura onto some rather nice Indian paper (this piece has cornflower petals - I also did plain white, grey, and medium grey-blue, and haven't decided which I'll use yet) without dampening it.

Originally, I was intending the network to be much more vine-like, but I'm not unhappy with the way it turned out.

Ow, again

2008-06-30T18:35:00.003Z

No, I haven't stuck myself again - this one is muscle strain from a few hours with the carving tools. I'm working on the largest, most complex block so far - katsura, designed to print onto A4 paper.

But still, I'm most of the way through the final pass. It takes more or less four, after the design's been drawn on - first I cut out the gutter around the edge, and neaten up the outside edge of the printing area. Then I scoop out the white areas with the komasuki (U-shaped gouge - 5mm and 3mm depending on the size of the area) and/or the kentonmi (registration chisel - a standard straight-edged flat chisel. This is very much not what it's intended for) and after that go around again with the komasuki to deepen the holes and neaten up the edges a little. The final pass is with the sankakuto (ninety-degree V-shaped gouge - an amazingly useful combination of chisel and scoop) to neaten up the edges properly and eliminate as many random splinters and inappropriate angles as possible. It's also particularly good for steepening the cutouts, which is good for this one because I want clear white areas without cut marks this time.

I have only a rough idea what the final product is going to look like at this stage - well, obviously I know where all the lines are supposed to go on the macro-scale, but on the millimetre scale it could do almost anything, and that's one of the things I particularly like about printmaking. It almost completely sidelines my natural fussy-perfectionist tendency, and leaves the print with an unpredictable vitality.

Malachite & bronze

2008-06-26T15:54:00.003Z

Another experiment - I picked up two new colours and a new gloss medium, and wanted to try them all out.

The background is Hooker's Green (System 3), and the metalwork is done using Ara Dark Bronze. This is gorgeous stuff, but it's a nasty one to clean up - I had to go back to one brush and wash it over again. The catalogue suggested that the Rheotech gloss medium would also work as a hard, permanent, waterproof glaze/varnish, so I decided to try that out too. It ends up as a relatively low gloss, but still brings out the colour of the background beautifully.

I need to work on getting a more even texture for the varnish, but it still works.

Gramarye

2008-06-22T12:18:00.004Z

The design and text are screenprinted, the frame is screenprinted and then overpainted to give the broader deckle.

For this one, I made a screen framework from scrap mountboard and stapled the screen onto it. Note to self - do not attempt to block it out in the same colour as the sharpie you use to draw the text on.

I used another scrap of mountboard for a squeegee - oddly, it's remarkably difficult to find an actual squeegee around here. I'm sure I remember seeing them in all sorts of places, but when I'm actually looking for one...

The printing process went well, and it gave quite a lot fewer artifacts than the stencilling did. (Though, to be fair, that might also be down to taking more care over blocking it out.) One thing I did see was a set of blobs on the right-hand side, just outside the frame - that's the other reason I overpainted it, of course.

It's hard to make out with my crap photography, but there's an interesting 3D effect on the second half of the text - a grey drop shadow to the right. I'm not sure whether that's down to blocking or lifting or driving paint underneath, since I was standing on that side and spreading paint towards me.

T-shirt stencilling

2008-06-20T15:25:00.002Z

I made this the other day - Sainsbury's sell fairtrade cotton T-shirts for £3 each. Still horribly ecologically damaging, but there aren't really any practical alternatives to wearing cotton. And cheap, so I picked up some to experiment with.

(I tweaked the brightness and contrast a little, to adjust for the domestic lighting and make the pattern more visible.)

Following a friend's suggestion, I made a screen from net curtain fabric (£1.50 a metre from Walthamstow market) and spread it taut on my tambour frame. Some viscous grey acrylic worked nicely to block it out, after drawing on the design with a Sharpie (note to UK people - you can get authentic Sharpies at Ryman's, and they are indeed as good as people say).

I mixed up the paint, using 1:1 acrylic paint and textile medium, but managed to overestimate and dish out far more than I actually needed. I ladled it out with the brush and vigorously rubbed it in (with the same brush - this makes it, technically, stencilling rather than screenprinting) going over and over in several patterns.

The first layer - the gold - went on nicely, but I didn't have complete coverage. Some areas of the disc were a bit patchy. I ended up taking the screen off and hand-painting over it, since it was such a large area and no fiddly bits to deal with, and deliberately doing texture effects. I'm not sure either way about the rough, frayed edges of the disc - I rationalise it by thinking of it as deckle.

After leaving that to dry for 24 hours or so, I put the second screen on (the first was a simple circle) and repeated the procedure with the blue. This time it didn't need overpainting except in a few small areas - I didn't want to risk putting the screen back down and ruining the registration.

I'm rather fond of the distressed print effects and broken lines, and I'll freely admit to being a sucker for this particular colour combination.

Sources

2008-06-19T13:48:00.002Z

Quick post to note down where I've been getting things from - mostly, Atlantis Art in Whitechapel, and Intaglio Printmaker in Southwark. The latter is a bit of a trek to get to, especially in a London summer, but it's worth it. For those of you (most of you) outside London, both places do mail order of course.

On my first trip to Intaglio, I picked up a set of cheap Japanese carving tools (hangito, kentonmi, sankakuto, and two komasuki); some water-based ink for relief printing (oil-based is a bit more traditional, but I hate working with oil-based materials unless I have to); some battleship lino and a couple of pieces of katsura (gorgeous sexy Japanese softwood, carves wonderfully); a small roller; and a few large sheets of Velin Arches paper. This made a perfectly adequate set of equipment for kitchen-table printing, though I had to use the back of a large spoon as a baren. (A proper baren, and some of their carving vinyl, were top of the list on my return visit.)

Prices: a piece of lino six inches square is £1.70, and the vinyl is £2.05 for a piece 200mm x 300mm. (That's what I did this on.)
a
The katsura (10mm deep) is £4.81 for the same 200mm x 300mm, or £1.35 for six inches by four - that's what this is on.

I'm currently lusting after more paper, but I want to use up more of what I've got first. I also have some gorgeous-textured handmade Indian paper, in various colours, that I want to try printing onto - I just need to finish carving the block I started the other day. When my finger recovers a bit.

Ow.

2008-06-16T21:24:00.003Z

Just been trying another woodcut, after working on vinyl for the last three, and the difference in the cutting texture is very apparent.

Note to self - yes, that komasuki is sharp. Especially when you've just spent a couple of minutes on it with a waterstone. Just because it doesn't glide through katsura with the same effortless ease as through vinyl doesn't mean it isn't sharp. It may not be sharp enough - I still don't rate my sharpening technique much - but when you forget one of the cardinal rules of Not Being Bloody Stupid and jab it into your left forefinger it bleeds like a tube of Crimson Lake in a Hammer movie.

Two Birds

2008-06-16T14:22:00.003Z

I did these with another vinyl block, and discovered a couple of interesting things. The first is that - since the vinyl blocks are only 3.2mm deep, it's almost impossible to avoid getting ink on the higher ridges outside the "official" design - it gives me interestingly unpredictable bits outside the edges. And if I try to eliminate them all, I end up going right through the block.

The second is the response of this particular paper - Atlantis heritage woodfree paper, 315 gsm, quite smooth and hard-surfaced - to soaking. The first image was done with dry paper, the second moderately-soaked - what I did was stack half a dozen pieces of paper up on a waterproof surface, giving each a thorough squirting with the plant mister before dropping the next on, and wiping off the surface water before dropping each one on the plate.

Venus Aresin from the Waves

2008-06-10T11:06:00.005Z

Botticelli's Birth of Venus, reenacted by ball-jointed dolls. Those are about four and a half inches high - they're Puki Pukis, made by Cerberus Project. Cupid is a 'Cupid', the other two are both the 'Flora' model.

For comparison, here's the original. I'm rather impressed by how well a four and a half inch doll can recreate Venus's pose. Mind you, it's not entirely anatomically probable for a living model, at that.

(via Redcountess)

The art of Sidney Sime

2008-06-05T00:12:00.003Z

Discovered by chance from a Gutenberg ramble - Sime was an early 20th century artist who did a lot of illustrations for Lord Dunsany.

Gallery and Wikipedia link.

Vinyl print 1

2008-06-04T03:24:00.002Z

This is a triple experiment, really. I used a sheet of Japanese carving vinyl rather than the wood or lino previous pieces were done on - it's extremely nice to work with, except that I occasionally find myself carving too deeply and going right through. Not by accident, it's a lot like the softwood panels I used for others, but without a grain.

Secondly, I used pre-moistened paper (not soggy, just moist - I used a plant mister) to see what effect that has. The answer is basically that it doesn't, apart from making the paper a bit more tractable and less inclined to curl.

The third experiment was in using a proper (if cheap) baren, rather than rubbing it with the back of a spoon as before. It's physically easier and less painful to use, and has a nicer tactile quality - though when the guides say to rub with the grain of the baren covering, not against it, they really mean that.

Playing around with prints

2008-05-24T15:32:00.002Z

Digital manipulation using the Gimp. Moderately tedious, but it's a good meditation.

Second woodcut

2008-05-23T16:43:00.002Z

For this one, I decided to try cutting out areas to leave a raised line, instead of gouging out the lines of the design as before. It's harder work, but a lot of fun, and I can see it gives more opportunity to use the wood's nature.

Printmaking - woodblock experiment 1

2008-05-16T16:19:00.002Z

Lessons learned from this one - firstly, that printing from wood really isn't the same as printing from lino. Having a solid block rather than a flexible piece of lino to work on is good, but it also leaves me open to edge effects. I also need to use quite a bit more ink than I think I do.

Second, if I'm going to leave a gutter and a non-printing area at the edge, I need to make the gutter quite a bit larger. The square frame above was intended that way, but didn't work out.

Relief printing with linocut - first attempt

2008-05-16T02:42:00.003Z

I've been playing a little with relief printing, and I'm enjoying it immensely so far. This is my first piece. It's actually the second impression I took off the first block I made, but since it's my favourite of the edition (of three) this is what I chose to upload.

The paper is Velin Arches, and the ink is water-based lamp black from the Graphic Chemical & Ink Co.

Blood on Paper at the V&A

2008-05-01T20:12:00.003Z

The V&A exists specifically to own interesting stuff, and to explain why it's interesting. They're generally very, very good at it. So when I saw on a visit there that they would be putting on an exhibition on the Art of the Book, I was really keen to go and see it.

I failed to do so twice, due to illness, but managed it with Lori and Scott yesterday. And now I want my half hour back. It was dreadful.

They made a conscious decision to let the objects speak for themselves, but that really does need some help on the part of the curator. What we saw was a half-dozen small rooms containing books, or book-like objects, in glass cases, with the occasional large centrepiece which may have been designed to echo the form of a book, or contained books somewhere in its structure or inventory.

The idea, apparently, was to examine how contemporary and recent artists had responded to the idea of the book - mostly they did this by, well, making books, whether the traditional kind with words and/or pictures in, or the other kind with pages (optionally attached to each other and/or covers) which had some kind of adornment, decoration, defacement, or other pseudo-informational content on.

Unfortunately, the only metadata any of the items had was the title, the name of the artist, the dates, and a very brief summary of what they did. Nowhere was there any information about which parts of the process the artist had done themselves, how the construction fit into traditional ideas of what a book is (or for that matter any introduction to traditional ideas of what a book is), or any opportunity to do anything other than look at the item as the curator chose to display it in its case and stroke your beard thoughtfully.

It was also very restricted in time and cultural space - the earliest example was from 1947, and there wasn't any work from anyone who wasn't a European or American artist. Cai Guo-Qiang's work has a lot of traditional Chinese elements (his contribution, and Anish Kapoor's, were the only two that really stood out for me) but he's based in New York. Interestingly, 37 of the 39 artists whose work is represented are male.

It was curated by Elena Foster (of the Ivory Press) and one of the curators from the National Art Library, apparently.

A bit of brief research shows that Foster has very definite ideas on what constitutes an artist's book - it's anything the artist wants it to be. I can very much see the validity of this idea, but personally I'd like to see more emphasis put on the idea of it as a book, as a functional object rather than a knowing nod in the direction of a functional object.

That said, there isn't much difference at all between a traditional functional book sealed in a glass case, and one of Anselm Kiefer's sealed metal boxes containing sheets of poetry. We can't read either of them, can't process the text, can't interact with it as an information-dense cultural artifact.

Given the incredible history of the book, this exhibition just seems a complete waste of a moderately nice space.

SF ebooks, redux

2008-04-29T21:45:00.002Z

Yet another reason why giving away Free Electronic Books is a really fine idea - the latest one from Tor, Karl Schroeder's Sun of Suns, arrived last Friday and I finished it in a few hours. It's really rather good - but if it hadn't come through that push channel, I'd never have known about its existence. After that, though, I'll be looking for the rest of the series (and yes, spending actual money on them) and downloading a copy of his first novel, Ventus.

Ventus is a novel of information apocalypse set in the far future. For a thousand years the sovereign Winds have maintained the delicate ecological balance of the terraformed planet Ventus. Now an alien force threatens to wrest control of the terraforming system away from the Winds...