pigeon gillian: April 2013

PILLOWS!

I spent a day making pillow covers yesterday and practiced sewing a zip! After a few dodgy pillows, I feel that I have got the hang of it!

I screen printed this design onto 100% linen...

At Spotlight I found a really groovy, fluro pink polka dot cotton for the back of the pillow...I love it!

I also made a cover for my friend Claire who loves horses, but I liked hers so much that I made one for myself! I also love this mustard polka dot. I think the fabrics come from Japan somewhere. I think I need more of this fabric!!!

RECENT ETCHINGS

In March I have been attending an etching night course at the Australian Print Workshop in Melbourne as part of a follow up session from an earlier 3 day workshop that I attending in January this year. The course has really consolidated my understanding of copper etching and I also trialled aquatint for the first time. One really nice thing about participating in the two courses is that I can really appreciate etching in greater depth now because I can understand some of the processes.

I am hoping to lead some copper etching in senior art classes at work and hopefully I can play around a bit more myself.

Oh, and I also invested in some 'Oriental Blue' printing ink for the last week of class - I love it, well and truly! That's why all of these prints are in blue. It is a lovely shade of blue.

This etching is titled 'Melbourne' and the original drawing was created when I was on a school excursion recently at Skydeck in Melbourne.

This etching is the same image that I trialled in lino earlier this month for a lino print as part of Art Club, see here for the post. I was curious to compare the two different printmaking techniques and how they would work with each image. After trialling both techniques I have decided that I like both etching and lino printmaking but for different reasons.

This was the artwork in lino....

I later applied an aquatint on top of the original copper etching. I like this image, but it is really just a trial to see how aquatinting worked. I would like to play around with it some more I think....

PICTISH WOMAN BY GILLIAN NIX

This is another Art Club submission of mine from more recently. The theme was 'body'....

I came across this image in a book at work a few weeks ago. The book was titled 'The Decorated Body' by Robert Brain which immediately caught my eye because of this month's theme, Body.

I found the image above with the following information:

"A romanticised sixteenth-centuary view of a tattooed Pictish woman, by Theodore de Bry after John White. According to Julius Caesar the ancient Britons were tattooed with animal patterns, and it is possible that the word 'Briton' is derived from a Breton word meaning 'painted in various colours".

How very interesting! Apparently, Pictish women were valued much differently compared to today. They were the royal heirs, they fought in battles and the most interesting of all is that it was common for female Picts to have their bodies fully tattooed. I love the idea of women being completely decorated with animal patterns and floral tattoos which immediately gave me some visual ideas for this month's project.

This month I have been running some life drawing classes for senior students at work. A few times when I wasn't too busy helping students, I was able to do a few quick sketches of the life models. This particular pose I rather liked, and chose to develop the drawing for this idea. This is a relief lino print. (I'm sure that you are fully aware of my slightly obsessive relationship to lino - I love it!)

I had a few difficulties when I was printing this lino. The irregular shape and fine lines gave me many headaches, but I got some prints that I am reasonably happy with. Hope you like it!

Gillian

Here is the carved piece of lino...

The original life drawing sketches...

COLLABORATION FACES BY CHRIS & GILLIAN NIX

I'm back blogging a little as I kind of forgot to post these here earlier. This submission was part of the 'ART CLUB/AROUND THE KITCHEN TABLE' project, for the month which was 'Collaboration', and I created the collaboration with my lovely husband, Chris!

Hope you like them....

We got the idea for this project after seeing some online images from an exhibition called 'The Rituals', including the work of Melbourne based artist/designer Beci Orpin.

We completely ripped off their idea of each artist having to make an image centred around the eyes. We began our process by finding a head template (see below) and we both came up with a design for our own 'face'.

Chris's face is a development of one of his characters - he has tonnes of them doodled in sketchbooks and on scrap bits of paper. I'm a little bit obsessed with patterns at the moment, and this particular pattern is one from a mug that I have at home, and is an 'Octopus' pattern someone told me once. I don't know for sure, but I like it.

Inking up...

We used a different print press than normal. This one is a bit like a spongey sandwich toaster and you squeeze the lino and paper together for an even print.