Exhibition Time

This week I attended the private view of the Prize Exhibition at the RBSA Gallery in Birmingham where I have had a print selected to be exhibited! There was lots of networking with other artists and it was great to see lots of familiar faces from my local art society Dudley Society of Artists who had got their artwork accepted too! The exhibition is at the RBSA (Royal Birmingham Society of Artists), 4 Brook Street, Birmingham, UK until the 13th June so plenty of time to go and have a look at the very high standard of work there.

This is my print that was accepted for the exhibition - Culture Vulture a limited edition collagraph print.

Culture Vulture Collagraph Print

It all started from when I visited Warwick Castle just after Christmas last year. We spotted the birds of prey on show there and I just loved the look of the vulture and must have got about 20 photos of it!

I decided to do a quick watercolour painting of him when I got home!

Vulture Watercolour

When it came to making a new collagraph printing plate I couldn't resist using my vulture images and he looked like he was just made to wear a top hat and I couldn't resist adding a bow tie to his ruffled feathers on his neck to make him look very cultured! 

I don't like using pure black ink when printing as it can come out a little dull so I usually mix another colour in with the black. When I came to print him he was supposed to be black with a touch of purple mixed in to get a hint of purple but I added too much purple to the black by mistake but in the end I actually really like him in this regal purple colour! 

Here he is hot off my printing press!

Mounted and framed and ready to be taken to the art gallery!

Me standing very proud next to my print!

I will be going back to the gallery next week with my mum and dad to take them to see the exhibition and to also have a proper look at the artwork as there was so much to look at, can't wait to see it again!

Clare xx

Painting the Colosseum!

Colosseum Purple Watercolour Painting

We went to Rome a few years ago and ever since then I have been obsessed with painting the Colosseum. I still remember it taking my breath away when we came out from the station and saw it looming right in front of me! I love painting arches, windows, ruins and strong shadows so this was perfect for me!

I've painted it quite a few times in watercolour but I've been experimenting a bit with oil painting recently so thought I'd try to paint it in oils! Heres a few photos of behind the scenes of my painting (some of the photos were taken at night so not the best quality):

The very first sketch onto the canvas with a rough wash of acrylic paint just to get an idea of the structure.

First layer of oil paint to establish some tones and colours. I always paint everything at the same time and lots of layers.

 Lots more tones and a funny greeny colour has appeared!

Brightened up the Italian sky and added a few purple dark tones.

Starting to come together. I can't resist the purple and blues in the shadows!

Pretty much finished, I just like to live with a painting for a while to see if I can spot anything thats not quite right!

Colossuem Oil Painting

The finished oil painting! 

I'm off to Sicily soon so can't wait to be inspired by lots more Italian architecture!

Clare xx

How to Print a Squirrel!

My squirrel watercolour and ink painting proved very popular and I had great fun painting her. She was a squirrel that kept coming to our forest cabin we were staying in near York a few years ago and loved coming for the peanuts we had left out for the visiting badgers! I decided to make a collagraph print of her too and to do a bit of experimental printing to try and get all the colours. I printed all the colours on one plate with just one pass through the press. Here's how I did it:

Squirrel Watercolour Painting

This is the collagraph printing plate ready to be printed. It is made out of mountboard and various textures are added to the surface so that it can be printed as an intaglio print.



Getting messy adding a mix of blue and black oil based printing ink all over the printing plate until the whole of it is covered in a layer of ink.



 Wiping the printing plate with newspaper to remove the ink. This leaves the ink in the heavily textured parts of the plate and removes the ink in the smoother areas to print lighter tones and white.



The printing plate fully wiped. At this point it could be printed and it would just be black and white.

Adding some colour to the squirrel. I added a few rubs of brightly coloured inks with a lot of extender medium added so they would be very transparent. They were then wiped gently to leave a smear of colour.

 I then used a stencil of plastic to mask out the squirrel while I coloured the background. I added a very thin layer of green ink a la poupee (with a tightly rolled up piece of cloth) to the background grasses. This meant the original blue/black ink would show through the thin layer of green.

 I then removed the stencil and placed the printing plate on the etching press with a dampened piece of watercolour paper over the top. The whole plate, paper and blanket was passed through the press and then the moment of truth when the print was revealed! You never quite know what you are going to get from the printing plate but I was really pleased with this one and I managed to get six colours printed in one go too!

 

Here's the finished Squirrel collagraph print:

 

Squirrel Collagraph Print

And a close up of some of the detail of the print:

 

Also a close detail of my messy inky hands after my glove split while printing!

 

Clare xx

Wearable Artworks

I love the idea of getting my artwork out to people who wouldn't normally buy or be able to afford to buy original artwork. When I came to work on a new Steampunk costume I decided that I wanted to make some fabric wrist cuffs to wear which featured some of my wearable artwork so I thought I'd have a go at printing some myself!

I couldn't resist carving an octopus tentacle for a linocutprint. Its a very simple image but looks great printed onto fabric. I used the softcut lino so that I could cut out the shape of the tentacle and therefore didn't have to carve out the unwanted background. Heres me getting messy inking up the lino printing plate or tentacle!

 Lots of tentacles printed onto scraps of fabric, once I get printing I can't stop!

Once the ink was dry dry I started making! This is the one I made for myself with a ruffle at the wrist which matches my new green elf leaf skirt!

 Once I got started making of course I had to make a few more!

Purple Octopus Tentacle Cuff

 And a few more! These are available in my Folksy shop.

Steampunk Tentacle Fabric Cuffs

  I've even managed to make use of my huge tin of buttons too!

 With a little bit of left over printing ink I even printed a tentacle tote bag too!

Tentacle Tote Bag

I was enjoying making them so much I thought I'd try a few different coloured printing inks and also some of my cog linoprinting plates!

Steampunk Cogs Fabric Cuff

Green Steampunk Cog Fabric Cuff

I'm having great fun making them so should be making some more very soon!

Clare xx

Purple Animal Prints

I love the colour purple and find myself using it a lot in most of my artwork! When I first started doing my animal collagraph prints I just couldn't resist trying them in purple ink and can't believe how good they look!

Collagraph Print - created from a card plate made by adding glue, paint, enamel, collaged elements etc. This creates textures which hold the ink in varying degrees and is then printed through the intaglio process. This is a great technique for my animal prints as I can cut the card into the animal shapes!

The very first was my hippo collagraph print he just had to be tried in purple and was so popular the edition sold out completely with most of them going to America!

Purple Hippo Collagraph Print

I also did a Purple Elephant, Purple Rhino, Purple Penguin, Purple Tiger and Purple Cat and had to restock my purple printing ink quite a few times!

Recently I have been doing some more animal collagraph prints and couldn't resist doing a few purple ones!

Here's me getting very messy printing a Purple Meerkat.

 

And a Purple Pony hot off the printing press!

 

 

 A few of my toys got to star in the photos too!

Purple Lemur Collagraph Print

 

Purple Meerkat Collagraph Print

 

Purple Pony Collagraph Print

Looking forward to working on a few more purple animals soon!

Clare xx

New Photos!

"Hormakhet" Collagraph Print

I've been doing a bit of experimenting with updating some of my artwork selling photos. Normally I take the photos outside with lots of good natural light so I get the best colour matches to the artwork but this does have its downsides! Such as trying to find a neutral background in the garden that isn't going to detract from the artwork and look too busy, I normally prop them on our brick barbecue as that has a neutral wall behind it. The weather can be fun too, you can almost have the perfect shot and then the wind blows your artwork over! Also I have the added problem of a very nosey cat who likes to come and see everything that I am doing! 

Morpheus the cat supervising a photoshoot!

I decided last week to try something a bit different and to make the most of the bright Winter sun and try a few photos inside. I choose to take them on our marble fireplace as its cream with a neutral wall behind and the window is to the side to give lots of natural light.

I thought I'd start with some of my Egypt collagraph prints and whenever we go anywhere on holiday we always bring back little models/figures so I've got lots of props to go into the photos! I thought the Egypt prints looked great with the tiny little pyramids and Sphinx figure that we got from when we visited the pyramids a few years ago.

"Sphinx Head" Collagraph Print

I tried photographing my Stonehenge collagraph prints with a little model of Stonehenge itself but the model was very hard to make out and made the photo look a little fussy. I then remembered all my pebbles that I have collected from various beaches which I thought they would go really well with Stonehenge (it did cross my mind to make a mini Stonehenge with the pebbles but I thought that might be going a bit too far!)

"Stonehenge" Collagraph Print

I then got thinking about some of my Steampunk inspired artworks and thought why not just take a photo of the artwork with the actual hat and goggles that are in the artwork itself! This is my partners top hat and goggles which look great on him, the top hat is sadly too big for me else I would borrow it occasionally!

"Steampunk Penguin" Collagraph Print

Heres a watercolour painting of Morpheus the cat in my purple bowler hat and goggles and the very hat and goggles in the photo!

"Happy Cat" Watercolour Painting

I'm really pleased with how these have come out, now to get creative on all my other artwork photographs!

Clare xx