It poured on the school run this morning. The rain dripped off my hood, onto the end of my nose, and from there bounced off alternate knees. Wren screamed her head off when I put the rain cover on the pushchair, she hates it. Honestly, what I wouldn’t give for someone to be pushing me round in a cosy pushchair in a downpour!
From wet to dry, dry-point printmaking to be exact (tenuous link!). Some of you may remember me taking a dry-point day-class with the wonderful printmaker Lynn Bailey back in the spring. Dry-point is the process of creating a printing plate by scratching into a sheet of perspex or metal. I enjoyed it so much I booked myself onto an evening class and have been going along over the last few weeks, this time led by another great Devon-based printmaker, Jeremy Speck. Here is one of my prints (it’s Wren if you haven’t guessed). You might have noticed that I’m heavily influenced by Anita Klein! I’m so pleased with the effect and will be sharing some more prints here over the next few weeks.
When I graduated I received some sage advice from one of my college tutors about trying to do some sort of creative class once a year to keep the creative juices flowing, to challenge myself, and create opportunities for experimentation. Even better, she added, if it was something completely different to my normal approach, technique or discipline. She was right. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed going along to the class. It’s given me loads of food for thought for potential things I would like to try and most importantly, it’s been wonderfully cathartic to head out of the house for a quiet couple of hours and get mucky with inks.
There’s something about the inks isn’t there – I love using Distress Inks – they’re languishing in a box at present but the oil-based Polychromos pencils have jumped out of their box & treated to a trip in a Journaling Bible (US spelling). Great when you can flex those creative muscles & I love the character in your image – it’s worked beautifully as a print.
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