I have been exploiting the potential of the silkscreen mono-printing technique. It allows for a quite painterly look which would be difficult to achieve by other techniques. It is also possible to print multiple layers of ink and gradually build up an image, as well as using more conventional stencil methods.

I have also been working on both canvas and paper to see what differences occur. The canvas prints have a slightly softer finish but with more luminosity in the colour which is really effective. But it is also the challenge that they give the viewer that is interesting. The painterly look on canvas gives an initial impression that it is a painting, while in reality it is a print, which can be determined on a closer inspection.

One of the recent prints on canvas was recently accepted into the Surrey Open Art Exhibition currently on at the Lightbox gallery in Woking.

It was exciting to have my most recent work acknowledged in this way.  The work is relatively small 30cm square, but I have now started working on some larger pieces which are proving quite a challenge.

As the screenprinting process gives relatively thin coatings of ink as layers build up, the resulting colours increase in depth and hue as they are printed over. The order of printing will also alter the resulting colour. When I want to investigate something then I find making small works like these (they are about 20cm2) the best way, they don’t become too precious and the final result is not so important rather what is learnt on the way. My next task is another set with a different range of colours based from what I have learned here to try and refine a palette for more finished pieces.

I went on to try one with a large area of black which is something difficult to achieve by drawing as it rarely remains even. To start with, even with the printing there was a similar problem and the large area of black also seemed very dull. I decided to try an undercoat. I used ultramarine as this was also used in the pink mixed for the shape.

It provided a black with far more richness. I used the same image for the blue and the black inks. What was interesting was that in the final prints if the blue and black layers were slightly out of registration it gave an interesting tonal variation from the pink. Unfortunately this is not possible to distinguish in the photo below.  A bit of a break for Easter now and then back to my experiments.

After the Jerwood I went to the British Museum, if you have not discovered Room 90, tucked up at the back of floor 4, I would highly recommend it, it is part of the prints and drawings department. There is always an interesting selection of work from their collection on display. At the moment it is a range from Picasso to Julie Mehretu spanning most of the last century. There is a mix of the A list names and also a few surprises from some lesser known artists. One for me was a couple of drawings from Charles Seliger, somewhat surreal biomorphic shapes that wanted to move off the page. A later drawing from Philip Guston really showed his draughtsmanship, with a charcoal sketch of some of his classic hooded figures. While a couple from Gerhard Richter added to the sheer range of what he is capable of.

Then I went right back in time to the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead exhibition, while not sounding the most cheery of subjects it does show a range of fascinating drawings. The book of the dead was essentially a scroll of spells intended to aid the passage of the deceased’s soul to the afterlife and would be placed in their tomb. As so often happens, the richer you were the more elaborate scroll you could afford to buy for yourself, tailor made to your specifications while other cheaper ones were generic and scribes just added your name in the appropriate places.
The quality of the scrolls on display is amazing considering they range from two to almost four thousand years old. Over the years the spells and nature of the scrolls changed but they remained a combination of text and illustrations which depicted the stages of travel and tests required to reach the afterlife.

Drawing then can have many purposes but has been central to human culture for millennia.

Printing provides a different experience giving both joy and frustration as there is often an element of surprise as the work develops.  I had the pleasure of being able to work for 3 days last week in the print room at my old collage.  I took the chance to work on some etching plates in steel and to see how my recent series of drawings might translate into print.

Preparing the plates is a quite physical process in itself, both before and after the etching process, so different from just the drawing.  Then there is the magic moment of lifting the paper away from the plate after is has been through the press and the print is revealed.  It is only then that you can see if what you planned has worked.  If there is right amount of etch or appropriate inking, all are seen at that point.  There is just a different energy to this type of work and I’m sure it must eventually get transmitted to the images produced.

For the first time I also tried some carborundum work and really appreciated the tonal variation it can provide within an image. From the 3 days I came away with a range of prints some have failed others are perhaps getting near to what I’m after and as ever there is more experimenting to be done on another day.

But for the rest of the week, I have three days of play coming up, back into the print workshop. I have mainly been drawing over the last few months so it will be fun to get my hands mucky with ink again as I experiment with some etching and collagraphs. A chance just to play with some ideas that might lead to something new, just see where it all goes.