The Girl Who Could Read Flowers - Carving

A bit quiet on the art front lately, but have been doing a little work on this linocut so thought I’d post some progress…

Double/Triple Pears - Finished

Here are the finished Floating Pear paintings. I’ve reworked the stone shelves and glazed the pears, adding in a little more shading than the original single pears, so these ones pop out from the canvas more. It’s amazing how you start seeing different relationships between the pears in these multiple ones, they seem to have taken on a life of their own :)

Double/Triple Pears – First colour pass

I did a first colour pass on the pears last week, haven’t had a chance to blog until now. They’ll need a little tweaking here and there before they’re ready for glazing, but all in all they’re coming along nicely :)

The Girl Who Could Read Flowers - first block

Here’s the next lino design. It’s called “The girl who could read flowers”. I drew the original design for this way back in 2007 and it got put to one side because of the number of colours I was going to need to print. I’ve reworked it a little and think I can get the effect I want in 5 prints so I’ve transferred the design onto a new block and it’s a now all ready to be carved.

In The Forest

Here’s a final print. Lots of detail in this one so it took a long time to carve, but I think the end result has been worth it…I now find myself wanting to order some much larger lino blocks and make things even more complex lol ;) I think I’ll do a few more at this scale first though. Would be nice to get a small set together for Artweeks…Anyway, hopefully this is an image people will find both beautiful and curious…make of it what you will :)

In The Forest - first colour print

Here’s the first colour print, bad photo, but it’s too dark and snowy to go out and take a good one. This now needs a couple of days to dry and then I can print the black over the top and that’ll be this one done :)

In The Forest - test print

Finished the first block, here’s a test print which I’ve then transferred to the second block and then marked up. Once this one is all cut we’ll be ready for printing.

Drawing someone drawing someone...

Here’s a drawing I did as a Christmas present for Susan. It’s her daughter, who upon seeing it said, she liked it, but I hadn’t finished it as it wasn’t coloured in…which made me laugh, lol :) Children can be tough critics ;)

I hadn’t done a detailed drawing like this for a while, so it was really enjoyable. Think I may do a little series along similar lines in 2010.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Single Pears all finished

Pear Floating Above Stone Shelf…numbers 1, 2 and 3… I know you’ve seen lots of these, but I thought I’d post the finished versions of them all anyway :)

Glazing Pears

Have been rather busy with some freelance work and making things for Christmas of late, so not much work to blog here I’m afraid. However, I finished off the single pears this afternoon so I thought I’d take a few photos of how I do the glazing stage.

Here I’ve got the four colours I want to glaze with and a small pot of oil. Each of the colours is transparent, not opaque (if it doesn’t tell you on the tube you can look up the brand you’re using on the internet, or it’ll usually tell you in an art materials catalogue). To start I’ve mixed each of the colours with a little of the oil…

Next I paint over the area I want to glaze with a thin layer of pure oil, this helps blending and gives you an even finish as you work.

Not brilliantly clear this photo (and sorry it’s a different pear…) but here I’ve just dabbed on the colours I want quite crudely, a spot here and there. Then using a clean dry brush you lightly pull the paint around on the surface, working around the spots of different colour you’ve added. Clean and dry the brush VERY frequently to avoid turning the colours to mud, but don’t be afraid of mixing them in certain areas. In the case of these pears taking the green into the red gave a lovely bruised effect on the skin.

A final pear with the glaze all blended together…In this instance I’m just using one layer of glazing, but you can use as many as you like. The only things to remember are…let each layer dry fully before painting the next, and use the paint thinly…the whole point is to trap the pigment within the oil and get a magical optical blending of colour…think of the way light travels through a piece of amber and aim for that :)

A Pears Progress…

A busy day today (actually, yesterday now…), I decided to do a little more work on the three single pears, just a couple of hours building up the colours further and adding some highlights, I want them to have a jewel like quality so I think this was time well spent…followed that with some work on a drawing I’m doing for a Christmas present (So you’ll have to wait to see that blogged)…Then moved onto the double/triple pears, added some initial modelling to the pears themselves and then started painting the shelves…2 meters of stone shelf edge takes a while to paint lol…

Sketches

I’ve been doing a lot of scribbles for possible future linocuts/paintings of late. Usually while sat in the pub having a pint or two…I like sketching in pubs, I’m not sure if it’s because I was partly brought up in a pub, but I find them very safe, comfortable places to be with your inner thoughts…I don’t think it’s entirely due to the beer ;)…something to do with the smells and sounds…anyway, I thought I’d post a few pages from my sketch book…you may or may not see some of these appear in some form or other in 2010 :)

In case anyone is wondering the ‘In the Forest’ linocut is still progressing, albeit somewhat slowly…I think a couple more carving sessions should see it done, so perhaps we’ll get a first print this side of Christmas ;)

On vaguely related note, I’ve got one of the ‘Floating’ prints in Art Jericho as part of the Oxford Art Society’s Winter Show. Had a very nice little mention in the Oxford Times – “Graham Rice’s linocut Floating is a powerful study of twisted bodies in a boat moving towards what might be paradise. It’s a great picture. ”

…Floating towards paradise was exactly what this piece was about, so that was lovely to read :)

You can read the full article here.

Three single pears

Second job of the day was the main painting on these single pear paintings…the bachelors of the pear world to follow the comments of the previous post ;)…all looking nice and glowing now. I’ll add a few highlights to the front of the shelf and then glaze the pears once they’ve dried.

Drawing up next set of pears

First painting job of the day done, I’ve finished drawing up the next set of pear paintings…onto the next stage of the single pears now…:)