Over the last couple of months...

I've been working on a new landscape linocut for a year, it kept taking a back seat for various reasons but I finally finished it. I've written a long piece about it on my Substack, which you can find here. I submitted it, and the alternative version of the decorating kiln at Gladstone Pottery Museum, to the Derby Print Open and I'm happy to say that both got accepted! They have been delivered to Banks Mill Studios (using a local train service again which I love to do!), and the exhibition will be on throughout June.

I've been trying to think of ways of making my working practice easier this year. I've already produced a sub-par linocut for a challenge, it was a waste of time in the end I think, but I'll be very glad indeed if anyone ever takes a shine to it. I give in to these challenges far too easily when I don't really have the time to do them. However, there are three things that I have already made in some sense that can be used for three events over the next few months. One will involve fishing out the blocks for my only multiblock linocut, another will involve sticking my neck out and getting an existing large linocut framed, and the other will make me figure out the packing for my craft press so that I can finally print a drypoint plate that I made years ago for the Green Door Studios International Print Exchange, and at last send it in! More news on all of these soonish, hopefully.

Bring Me Sunshine fundraiser linocut

Estuary Dawn Linocut Print

For the first time this year, I am taking part in the Thought Press Project, a charity fundraiser involving 100 printmakers. I had heard of it before, but only really discovered what it was all about when one of the organisers came onto the Printmakers Chat Discord to promote it, and gather some more participants. The theme this year is "Bring Me Sunshine", inspired by the Morecambe and Wise song, and it can be interpreted in any form of printmaking. It's also aiming to be as accessible as possible to prospective buyers, with the price of each work of art being kept deliberately low - some below £10, and very few exceeding £40.

The two charities that will benefit are organisers Edible Rotherhithe, who provide creative learning opportunities through both gardening and printmaking sessions in schools, and Place 2 Be which helps school children improve their mental health and wellbeing across the UK.

The challenge was launched at the beginning of February, with all prints to be in London by the end of March. The limited editions of 10 hand-made prints have been listed on the shop as they have arrived, and have already been raising much needed funds.

Composite image of printing process

I chose to make an A6 - sized linocut, roughly 10cm x 15cm, in an edition of only 10. It's based on a photograph by a friend which I have used for two other linocuts previously, of a view across Ostal Bay in Argyll and Bute, Western Scotland. I'm happy to say that my fundraiser linocut is now available!

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