Urban Sketching

I recently managed to join the Stoke Urban Sketchers in Longton town centre. Longton has the highest concentration of surviving bottle ovens in the Potteries, and has some great Georgian architecture. I very rarely make it to the sketch meets due to my home responsibilities, but it was bliss to be out in the rain with my sketchbook, all of my worries about people thinking I was weird just vanished as I got into the groove of drawing again. First of all, I headed to the other end of town, passing a couple of fellow artists already set up by the town hall, as I had an electrical substation to draw.

 I have found quite a number of surviving c.1930's substations around and about Stoke, some of which are quite grand. I hope to make visual records of them before someone decides to decommission them and replace them all with metal boxes. This one isn't particularly unusual, but it's a classic, straightforward and functional building, and having found that it was next to the police station in town, I wanted to make it my first to be recorded. The drawing is is rain-assisted, and coloured with my Derwent pencils which sadly aren't water-soluble.

I then returned to the town hall to take a bit of shelter from the rain, as I wanted to have a go at capturing the historic railway bridge which spans the central road junction. I am so glad of my landscape format sketchbook, which is A6, perfect for me as I like to work quickly.

 It was still a bit tricky even at that size as the breeze kept catching the left-hand page as I was trying to catch the traffic, so it became a little spidery over there. I'm annoyed at failing to finish the front of the hotel, behind the bridge, but I was cold and damp and had to seek shelter in Strand Records for a bit (and came away with some vinyl that I'd been looking for!).

Having popped to the car to park my record out of the rain, I made my way up to platform 2 on Longton station. It was deserted due to industrial action, although I later found out that there had been a large number of sketchers in the platform shelter at one point! There is a very convenient gap in the cover of the shelter for drawing the Phoenix Works bottle kilns and chimney, which I suspect is actually so that the CCTV can monitor what is going on in there. Handy though, particularly in wet or very sunny weather. I was finally able to use my watercolours as I had a seat here, and could use my knee as a table. Not my best, but happy nevertheless.

I haven't managed three more or less complete sketches on one of these trips before, it was such a wonderful therapy being able to be outside, engrossed in my work for a couple of hours with only the weather as a bit of an interruption. I'm looking forward to joining them again at some point in the not-too-far-distant future, and also to being able to record some other substations. I'm hoping that I'll have the confidence to draw nearer to home, where I'm more likely to be seen by people who only know me as one of the local dog walking community. We'll see!

#UrbanSketching #drawing #sketching #StokeOnTrent #Longton

As one year closes...

So at the close of one year, and the beginning of another, finally a catch up!

Our eldest and I visited the Derby Print Open in June, it was great to see all of the other work - so many different printmaking techniques, and very inspiring. I was very happy to have sold two of the framed linocuts!

Here are photos of the finished Gladstone decorating kiln linocuts, I've been interested to see that the more experimental one seems to be the more popular of the two. I'm intending to do more playing with ink application in the future, so this has been encouraging. One of each has already sold at Gladstone Pottery Museum, where they are currently exclusively for sale.

I completed the partner-piece to the green and black version of the Minkstone linocut ("Restoration") - here is the A4 orange and black version of Chetam's Pottery, "In Limbo". I really enjoyed working on this one, and I'm very pleased with how it's come out.

For the first time this year, I entered the Three Counties Open - a juried exhibition that covers Staffordshire, Cheshire and Shropshire. It's the Open that I have always wanted to take part in as it's our local, but had never before felt brave enough. I was over the moon to be accepted with "Restoration", and here it is on the wall at Burslem School of Art, Stoke-on-Trent, surrounded by wonderful work by other local artists. I will be entering again next year, ever hopeful.

I don't feel as though I've spent much time printing this year - a lot of my time has been taken up with enabling my husband Ian to get two big commissions done, which have been stressful at times but fulfilling. Looking back, I've done more than I thought I had, but it was often in snatched free hours and weeks apart. This coming year we're both hoping to get into better work routines so that we can both get into a more healthy creative rhythm.

The year has ended with the closure / relocation of Two Silver Pennies in Uttoxeter. It's been good to have been involved, but I've decided to leave as along with many of my fellow artists and craftspeople, sales have been down by getting on for half this year, and I'm trying to reduce my outgoings a bit. I wish everyone who is moving across the street to the Globe Eco Centre all the very best of success for the 2024!

Comings and goings

It's been a busy few weeks of stock management, with little actual making, but some exciting things have happened despite that. I had a bit of a battle with a courier over the return of work from the RCA Conwy Open, but it is finally home, and has now been entered into the Three Counties Open - I really hope that it is successful as this is a very local competition to us, but I shall have to wait a while and see. Meanwhile, I was beyond excited to discover that three of my five submitted linocuts for the Derby Print Open are going to be part of the exhibition, and along with a fourth will be available unframed in the shop. I was able to hand-deliver the work to Banks Mill Studio in Derby, again using our local train station which is on the Derby line. Hooray for public transport!

I have been able to do a bit of printing, the next layer has gone on to both versions of the small kiln at Gladstone.

As you can see they're quite different to each other - the first is very experimental as wanted to play a bit more with spot inking (using small, narrow rollers to ink specific areas) and texture, which I achieved here by using 80% extender in the ink. I know from unwanted experience that this results in patchy coverage, but here it was what I was after, so all experience is useful eventually! I then carved out the lino to print the second, where you can now begin to see more of the structure. The next couple of phases will be working on the first again, always bearing in mind the effect of any carving on the second one, which is now just waiting for the final layer of detailing. A lot of careful thinking and carving ahead.

Last year, in response to the Pressing Matters magazine green and black challenge, I created an A4 version of one of my A6 bottle kilns. Here the are side-by-side:

I have wanted to continue a series of larger versions, with the next intended to be a larger version of my recently completed Chetam's Pottery, which will be orange and black. Completely coincidentally, that is the theme of the next challenge, so I have my time set down for me. The design has been enlarged, and is traced on to a piece of A4 lino ready to be worked on, so watch this space!

Finally, I posted previously about the lovely Two Silver Pennies gallery and shop that has now opened in Uttoxeter. I popped over with our eldest to drop off some more cards yesterday and it was great to see the shop now full of beautiful handmade local products!

This is a very small selection, but some of mine and my husband Ian's pictures are here - Ian's paintings are the Tudor house (Little Moreton Hall in Cheshire), the speckled wood butterfly on blackberries, and the bouquet of lilies. If you want to visit the shop, it's at 1 Church Street in the town centre, postcode ST14 8AG, and it's open Tuesday to Saturday.

That's all for now! More soon, God bless.