Vase Drawing

Today I decided to sketch this strange wobbly vase that I made about 20 years ago. It has lots of chips from it's travels around the world and is partly held together with blue-tac but I still love it. I paired it with this shiny blue vase. Both objects were very challenging to draw. See below for the stages the drawing went through.

1) A blind contour drawing to get to know the objects really well.

2) A line drawing. First in graphite and then traced with pen.

3) Shading with B pencils

4) The tracing was then overlaid on the shaded drawing.

Vases in Graphite

I'm trying to spend a bit more time sketching. Today I drew these wooden vases that I have in my dining room. I like to start by doing a blind contour drawing. With this type of drawing you do not look at your paper or lift your pencil up. It really forces you to look carefully and get to know the object you are drawing. I always find my final drawings come out better if I have made a blind contour drawing first.

Next I did a graphite outline drawing of the vases using a clutch pencil for fine lines. Before I shaded it I decide to trace the drawing with a black ink pen so I will still have the outlines only.

The pencil drawing was then shaded with ordinary 2H, 2B and 4B pencils. I used an eraser to make the highlights.

The sketchbook I'm using has sheets of tracing paper between each page of cartridge paper. The image at the top of this post shows the tracing overlaid on the drawing. Below the tracing is overlaid on the contour drawing. I like how you can get several different effects by combining the different types of drawings and tracings.

Mono-Print Monday - Setting Up Your Workspace

Welcome to Mono-Print Monday. This week I share some quick tips for setting up your workspace for a print run.

Here is a photo of my typical set-up.

Do not be tempted to get out any paint until you have everything to hand, unless you like acrylics on your door handles, drawers, chairs and everywhere!

The more space you have the better. I put my Gelli® plate in the centre on a Teflon sheet. If I'm going to be photographing I put a white sheet of paper underneath. As I'm right handed I put my roller on the right. I like to have 2, one for light and one for dark colours. To the right of that is a newspaper for cleaning the rollers on. When the page is full of paint I simply flip over to the next clean one. In front are all the paints I plan to use. I get any paint tools, stencils and textures out that I might want to use. These are on the left. I also have a big pile of clean paper, I know I'll go through loads and I don't want to go to the drawer with dirty hands. Baby wipes and kitchen paper are essentials. Sometimes I also manage to fit in a palette on the right for mixing colours too.

It's really important to consider where you are going to put your prints to dry before you even begin. Mono-printing is quick and you'll soon be buried beneath a pile of prints. One of my best investments was this drying rack from the educational suppliers. Really good racks can set you back thousands of dollars but a simple one like this is not too expensive and will make your life so much easier. It can hold paper up to A2 size.

What is your workspace like?

Printing the Old-Fashioned Way

This weekend we went along to Whiteman Park for the Heritage Festival. The highlight was a talk and demonstration at the old print shop. Most of the presses in the shop use the letterpress technique. We watched the machines in operation and even had a go with the hand press.

There were many great examples of print around the workshop.

Letters Quilt Challenge

This year the Contemporary Quilt Group challenge is "letters". The challenge is due in next month so I thought I'd better get started (and finished the same day!).

The quilt size should be roughly A3 - what a great incentive to make another quilted book cover! This quilt will be displayed opened out at the Craft and Quilt Fair but afterwards I'll use it as a book cover - continuing with the theme, books contain letters don't they!

I collected up all the fabrics I had with letters on them. Some I had made by making rubbings of letter stencils with Shiva sticks. Another had machine embroidery lettering all over it. There were rubbings with Inktense sticks and text painted onto grease-proof paper. I mounted the paper onto cotton using fabric medium. "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", the old typing practise sentence, seemed the appropriate thing to write.

Some of the pieces were too small on their own so I pieced them together in my typical inaccurate style.

I used the quilt n flip technique to attach them to the wadding. The backing fabric wasn't put on until I made up the book cover. I decided to attach extra fabrics, ribbon and tassels into the seams.

When I couldn't get a pin in to keep them in pace masking tape did the trick long enough to get it sewn down.

I couldn't stop adding more and more inserted into the seams. It was surprising that my sewing needle actually went through it all without breaking. I made some letters from felt with thick wool stitching done in the bobbin.

I used this fabric with a rubbing for the book cover lining.

A little hand x stitch (letter ex!) held things in place. Here are some pictures of the finished quilt with a book inside.

Come along to the Quilt and Craft Fair and see this and all the other challenge quilts at the Contemporary Quilt Group table. Make sure you vote for your favourite.

Gelli® and Pastel

This week on the Gelli Arts® blog Birgit was showing how to use Gelli® plates with pastels. You may recall I tried pan pastels on the plate a while back (previous post) and I had a real problem getting them off again. That was before I knew about baby oil. Thank goodness Birgit mentions that in her video below.

At the top of the page and below are a couple of prints I tried with the technique. Although they are pretty I think it's just as easy to do the whole thing with paint.

Mono-Print Monday - How Much Paint?

I thought I would start a series of blog posts about mono-printing - Mono-Print Monday! I'll be mainly taking about the Gelli Arts® gel plate. I'll put up a short post each week with a tip for you to use in your printing.

This week is all about how much paint. No matter how many times you explain, beginners will always put on too much paint and get disappointing  prints. Here is how much paint you need - less than you think!

You can see the paint has rolled out smoothly, almost translucent and without any smears or ripples. Here is the print I took and the gel plate afterwards. Notice there is hardly any paint left on it.

The print is crisp and clear and you can see some background paper colour.

Here is how not to do it. Too much paint. You can see it it really thick on the plate and the print it produced was blurred. There was also loads of paint left on the gel plate.

There was so much paint on the plate that I got another (blurred!) print.

Most people use squeezy tubes or bottles of paint with their gel plates. Whilst they are quick to grab and there are no brushes or palette knives to clear up they are very prone to splurging out way too much paint. You can always remove some onto scrap paper with a roller but what a waste! I prefer to use pots of paint with a lolly stick for grabbing out a small amount of paint. You get much more control than with the tubes.

So if you are disappointed with your mono-prints try using less paint!