'GARDEN DRESS'

Hello everyone, here is my submission for this month's theme for Art Club which was 'Garden'.  It is a little lino print titled 'Garden Dress'.  I just finished it yesterday after a little day using the press at school.  I was led by the idea that our bodies are like gardens and can grow and mend in such an amazing way.  And particularly female bodies - as we can grow babies! When I was researching  found an image of Adele in an amazing red Valentino dress which led me to making the initial ink drawing which I've included a photo of below.

Hope you like it!

Gillian x

A new project

Here are some photos from my most recent lino cutting project.  It is half of a collaboration project that my husband and I are creating for 'Around The Kitchen Table/Art Club' this month.

Here are some photos from today and yesterday.  The final should be done in the next week...cough cough...hurry up husband!!!

Using the head template on tracing paper to draw the pattern for the lino design...

This is where I started cutting...

More cutting.  I enjoyed cutting today as I was sat in the sun listening to some podcasts.  The sun is great for heating up the lino and it makes it much easier to cut...

Test prints in blue...

This is a lino that I've been working on for about a year...no joke!  It's quite funny I think, as whenever I get bored (hardly ever) I do some cutting on this lino.  I took a print from it today while all the inks were out as I wasn't sure if the textures in the background were going to show up - they did - hooray!  Who knows when it will get finished, but it's always good to have background projects in my opinion.

Etching Course

This week I was extremely lucky to attend an Etching course at The Australian Print Workshop in Melbourne.  I have been wanting to do an etching course for ages and I had dabbled a little in some dry point etching myself, but without the results I had hoped for.  Two of my friends are avid etchers and they both have taken courses here and recommended the course.  

Here are some photos from the 3 day workshop.  We covered hard and soft ground etching and had the chance to experiment with Chine-Colle and colouring techniques.

I loved it!

This is my hare print which is part of my Art Club submission for this month, which I will post and explain about in a few days time....

Etching the hare onto hard ground...

Adding detail....

I had looked through some old sketchbooks for drawing material on the course.  This particular naked lady was drawn over 6 years ago at a life drawing class...

I used soft ground on this plate originally but didn't get the dark black lines that I had hoped for onthe figure, so I later dry point etched into the copper plate...

Experimenting with Chine-colle and dry point etching....

I also had time to do another hard ground etching on the back of the naked lady copper plate, and I used this sketch which I did in Barcelona a few years ago of the Sangrada Familia...

Different colours and inking applications.  

You can also see some of the other work from the course which was on the drying rack at the same time as mine.  Being on a course like this, you get to see such a wide variety of drawing and working styles and you also learn so much from each other as you make mistakes and have successes...

The copper plate had picked up a range of scratches as it was the back of the naked lady, but this 'noise' was quite a nice effect I thought...

The work space was fantastic, and kept unbelievably clean!

Buttons Galore!

A few years ago my dad gave me a big box of buttons.  He used to have his blacksmith workshop in a skip yard in Scotland and every so often a skip full of random stuff would come into the yard.  Sometimes it would be a skip from a house clearance, perhaps after someone has died or moved house, or sometimes from shops.  One year all our family got Calvin Klein perfume for Christmas after dad found a massive pile of the stuff in a skip! The boxes had been damaged so the shop couldn't sell them.  Bonus for us!  Anyway, back to the point....the box of buttons.  I've had this box for years now and I shipped it to Australia with us because I knew it was too good to throw out.  This week I decided to start sorting through it and sort the buttons into colours.  Not only were there buttons, there were all sorts of habidashery and little clues about the previous owner.  I found an envelop addressed to 'Mr I Kilgour' and a fabric name tag which reads 'Margaret Kilgour'.  The envelope has an Edinburgh address and a post mark date of 1989.

I suppose some people might think it a bit mean to be going through someone else's belongings in such a way, but I don't.  These treasures would have been thrown to land fill if dad hadn't found them and passed them on to me.  I love thinking about the Kilgours and about the amount of years that they had been collecting these buttons.  There are some very old looking ones in here....

There was a great cigar box (pictured here) which had test tubes of different coloured buttons inside it...

White buttons are by far the most popular colour...

Quite a lot of the buttons are still attached to the original packaging material...

The name tag...

The postage mark reads 'EDINBURGH 9AM, 31 MCH 1989'...

I sorted the buttons into colours and put them into glass jars for display...

Agapanthus

At the moment Melbourne is full of beautiful Agapanthus and they are just lovely!  The other morning I was out running and took these photos.  I think I will have to have a go at drawing some of these beautiful flowers...

Monoprinting Workshop

Today I attended a mono printing workshop at Zart Art in Melbourne for a professional development day.  It was lots of fun revisiting mono printing and having a whole day of drawing and making.  Here are some of my prints from today...

Rugby player...

daffodils...(my favourite from today)

a doodle...

a big orange flower...

face doodle... 

teapot doodle... 

Exam Drawing

A recent doodle that I made when I was supervising an exam...