Sketchbook project 2012

For those of you that don't know, ArtHouse Co-Op in Brooklyn, New York has been doing a yearly sketchbook project, where for a relatively small fee (compared to the usual entry fee for UK exhibitions) they send you a A5ish sized sketchbook which you can alter almost anyway you like, a project title and will then exhibit the sketchbook around the USA and store it in the Brooklyn Art Library forever for people to look at.

For 2012 the project is also getting toured overseas, so my sketchbook should be available to view not only throughout the USA but back here in Blighty as well.

Pages 6 and 7

There were a selection of topics to choose from, with my love of postcards and subverting the traditional postcard image I chose “It's Summer Where You Are”. I intentionally wanted it to be quite free flowing like a sketchbook should be, also like a journey and work with images and postcards that were from places I had travelled. I was tempted to use postcards I owned to present some kind of story from a fictional person on a journey but felt that it seemed a little forced for the idea of the sketchbook. It is after all meant to be an exploration of ideas as well as a body of work. There needs to be some experimentation. Additionally I'd tried previously to produce my painted postcards with reverses, this seemed like a good idea but in the end it just served to make my point about these paintings being postcards too bull headed. Of course there is always a exception to the rule as Greetings from the Mantelpiece showed.

Pages 8 and 9

In the end I dumped the writing idea completely leaving just a few examples on pages that were meant to be more about unformed ideas than actual semi finished work. Which in the end was just some musings on all the various ice cream trucks I had encountered on my travels over the last 5 years. The rest became a mix of small scale biro drawings, a few unusual or interesting photographs and printed on postcards.

Roughly the sketchbooks journey started with an exploration of places around the coast. I'd been to Southwold very recently on a summer holiday and as one that reminisced heavily from my childhood holidays with my parents it seemed an obvious place to start and spend some time/pages on. Moving on, the sketchbook visits Portsmouth (including Portchester), Cowes and from the boats of Cowes to the boats of Venice then through other foreign places including India and Tenerife. Returning back to London and following a route west towards my home, through Kew Gardens, Windsor and Virginia Water.

Pages 16 and 17

The inside back cover and front cover are the same image done using two different methods that both had heavy use in the sketchbook. This image of Brooklyn Bridge was taken by me when I visited New York in 2005 and is one of my favourite images from the trip. I wanted to include it as a homage to the sketchbooks final resting location and organisation that created the project. The original idea for the book was to have the book reflect the actual physical journey it would go on but I felt uncomfortable trying to reproduce images of places I had never been. Nor at that time did I know if I had postcards from each of these places. I still am unsure but thats a story for another day.

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Many of the methods used you will recognise. The biro drawings I have been doing for a few years now. I was interested however if I could do them that small and in trying to push myself technically.

The photographs were chosen because of an inherent oddness or importance to the visit I made. For example on page 9 I have a photograph of a sunny Southwold with an obvious and somewhat ominous rainstorm on its way (No photoshop by me, this was real and I got very wet that day). On page 16 there is photograph of a pair of entertainers in Cowes week, dressed as sailors they arrived and created an utterly surreal air about the place. It was fantastic and really set the tone for the rest of the day.

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The printed on postcards embraced a number of methods depending if I already had produced a plate for another purpose of that place. There is a postcard of Southwold beach huts that has on the reverse a print from my Southwold Beach Huts etching. There is a postcard from Tenerife that I have printed on using a solar plate of Tenerife and there are a number of postcards that I have used the polymer plate lithographic process on including Venice and the front cover showing Brooklyn Bridge.

The method of printing was fairly immaterial, polymer plate won out with the newest plates only because it was cheap, quick and very graphic. Mainly I was interested in the idea of printing imagery on the reverse rather than words. It seems subversive and can produce some aesthetically interesting combinations. While imagery, it still retains this contrast from the highly detailed photograph.

The tour starts in April in New York. http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject2012

Images are my actual sketchbook.

Pages 24 and 25

Printmaking updated

Does anyone remember the blog post way back in February, where I explained the current series of prints? If not feel free to read it again: link

It's now December and I recently put the last of my monthly prints up on the website. An image of Cowes, it's original photograph was taken in June 2008 during Cowes week.

Sunny Cowes 2011 drypoint on tissue paper, handcoloured

Since starting printmaking at South Hill Park I've learnt a great deal. I've had to put it on hold during the last term due to financial and time pressures, but hope to get back to it in the near future.

Since last I spoke about it, the reasoning behind the prints has not changed at all. However after doing 14 different images I felt I wanted to explore other ways print could be used within my practice. Print after all has a great variety of processes, some of which suited the postcards on tissue and others that didn't but had other intriguing qualities.

As well as drypoint, I learnt how to etch plates which was one of the few processes I had done once previously at University. It worked quite nicely for the postcard prints, two plates were made using this method, a Venice and a Southwold image.

Beautiful Venice 2011 etching on tissue paper, handcoloured

The display of the tissue prints was an issue until I came across clear frameless acrylic frames from Muji that are both extremely unobtrusive and very clever. I would have them suspended in front of a window allowing the transparent qualities to shine through. Obviously in a home setting this isn't always entirely possible, after exhibiting them recently in this fashion I now understand the rate that the inks lose their colour. This can be only a matter of months for obvious discolouration, so in a home setting you might want to actually hang them out of direct sunlight, maybe even in a different sort of frame that has UV protective glass.

Southwold Beach Huts 2011 etching on tissue paper, handcoloured

There were two other print processes that while they didn't work for the postcards on tissue were very interesting nevertheless.

Solar plate is a process that uses a photo sensitive layer on a metal plate. It is then exposed to light through a transparency printed with your design. The black areas on the transparency stop the light while the pale areas let light through. When gently washed in warm water the areas that were protected from the light wash away, leaving an indentation. In many ways the process is like etching and drypoint, where it is the worn away areas that hold the ink and produce the black areas.

The results tend to be a very close to a photographic reproduction of the original image, and it was for this reason that it didn't suit the tissue paper postcards. When shrinking the original A4 drawings down to A6 size, then computer printing for the transparency, the small imperfections that make it look like a drawing are lost. When printed as a solar plate, while beautiful, they looked too much like a computer manipulation rather than a drawing. This was too close to the mass produced nature of the postcard for me.

Sunny Brighton framed at South Hill Park Student Open exhibition

Polymer Plate Lithography uses a plasticised paper that you can transfer an image onto. The action and method of transfer changes how areas of the plate react to water and oil. On the transferred image water is repelled and the oil based ink can adhere to the surface, while on the white portions the water stops the ink from sticking. (This may be a little inaccurate, I'm only just getting my head around the concept).

Like solar plate, the images are photographic transfers, rather than hand “drawn” like etching and drypoint. Unlike solar plate the images have to be far more graphic and less tonal. This method does not deal with grey areas well at all.

Beautiful Venice framed at South Hill Park Student Open exhibition

Both of these processes have some very interesting qualities, so some of my most recent prints have been looking at starting a new series that uses these photographic qualities along with the notion/subversion of the postcard. I also have another project in mind that will utilise the polymer litho but both projects are in very early stages. Another development has been the use of coloured inks as well as black.

I have however used all of the above processes in my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project, which is nearing completion and will require it's own blog entry very soon.