New Mini Haiku Book

Another project I've finally completed! This little Haiku picture book has gone through a number of transformations to get to its final state.

The book is called Thoughts on a Fragment (found in the ruins of an old school) and relates to the former open air school in Bradford mentioned in an earlier post (2nd May 2010).  Its printed on watercolour paper with archival inks and is a signed edition of 75. There are 8 photographs, a Haiku poem and a tiny story. 

Northampton High School

I've been away for the past week, working as Artist in Residence with girls aged 7 and 8 at Northampton High School in Hardingstone, Northamptonshire.  This is the third time I've been asked to work there and its always a pleasure.  This year was especially enjoyable as the project was themed around the school's beautiful wild area.  Regular readers of Tumbling Hills already know that I love working outdoors and find the natural world a constant source of inspiration and joy.

The May blossom has been particularly splendid  this spring and the school's wild area was full of green and white abundance under bright blue skies and warm sunshine when we went out there to observe and make sketches.  With many lovely trees, wild flowers and a large pond, the girls were spoilt for choice.  Back in the classroom girls made individual paper collage pieces ready to be combined into a giant collage running along the back of the stage in the assembly hall.

I'm really pleased with how the final piece came together and impressed by the intricacy and inventiveness demonstrated by the little artists. I would not have expected them to be able to concentrate for so long on the subtle variations in bark, leaf form and overall shape, and to render these so well in the medium of cut and ripped paper.  I had a great time composing the final image you can see here, although it took me a long time to get the placements just right.

These photos don't do justice to the real thing - being set back on a stage, the lighting was quite tricky.  Its hard to choose a favourite bit but I love the pond, especially as it doesn't worry about matters of scale and exists in its own reality...

Spring Has Well And Truly Sprung

Crossing over the Rochdale Canal just outside  Hebden Bridge yesterday, I saw this lovely scene of verdant tranquility. Spring is always amazing, you can never become blase about the metamorphosis from brown to green.

Woodcut Course on 22nd May 2010

I am running another woodcut printmaking course on Saturday 22nd May at my studio in Hebden Bridge.  The courses have proved very popular and participants on previous days have created some very interesting and attractive woodcut prints, as can be seen in earlier posts below and on Brooklyn Studios blog.  

The intensive one day course will run from 10 am to 4 pm and is suitable for beginners and those with experience.  The course fee is £50 for the day, including all materials.  For more information or to book a place, you should contact Angie Rogers, Brooklyn Studios, Unit 3, Hangingroyd Lane, Hebden Bridge HX7 7DD, telephone 0788 4307546 or send a message to angie.rogers(at)talk21.com  the (at) should be the conventional symbol but I'm hoping this post will bypass the spam robots. 

If you have never done woodcuts or indeed any other form of printmaking, don't be put off -  the process is very straightforward and easy to get to grips with, and the results can be quite magical.

Cyanotypes and the Alphabet

This Spring is turning out to be a time when I can complete some unfinished projects and reassess the direction in which my work is going.

A couple of years ago I ran a children's art project exploring aspects of the ruined site of an innovative open air school for children in a wood in Bradford.  We made beautiful blue and white cyanotype prints using the leaves and flowers growing in the woodland.  A cyanotype is a very simple kind of photogram that uses sunlight to power a chemical reaction on paper.

During the research stages of the project we kept finding small fragments of pottery - remains left from when the school burned down in the 1960s.  The most evocative items were two little adjoining pieces of a child's alphabet plate, but not the usual alphabet, this was the sign language alphabet for the deaf, so all around the edge of the plate were tiny hand signals.

I decided to teach the project children to sign the alphabet and take photographs of their hands spelling out a message, with a view to making a book.

It seemed appropriate to tint the photos blue in keeping with the cyanotypes we made and the archetypal blue and white pottery fragment. In the end however, whilst the concertina contents went on display, I didn't get a chance  to make covers and complete the book.  But now finally 'An Alphabet Across Time' is finished I'm pleased to say.  Its a unique book and I don't imagine there will ever be any other copies.

Cloud Atlas

Its strange that I mentioned clouds in my last post, and then the effects of one should cause so much disruption and media frenzy in the past couple of weeks.  I was on holiday in Cornwall when the flying ban was in place and I have to say it was wonderful to see the beautiful blue sky without any vapour trails.

I feel sorry about all the negative repercussions, like transplant organs being delayed and African farm workers being laid off, but  there's something to be said for being reminded that we are far from omnipotent and lack the means to control the natural forces of our planet.

All this cloud interest reminded me of a book I made early in 2009 but hid away because it didn't turn out how I imagined it would.  As you can see, the book is a kind of cloud atlas.

I'd been reading David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas and also studying The Cloudspotter's Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney and contemplating the wonderful variety of clouds that drift over the moors of Calderdale where I live.  During that same period I had to reorganise my studio and was wondering what to do with a stack of air mail envelopes I bought from a closing down Stationers, a pile of old security envelopes and an elderly UK road atlas...

Living in an upland region, you really notice how the clouds come swooping down the valleys and their huge dark shadows move across the hillsides in stately progression. I wanted to make my paper clouds 3D in some way, so that they cast shadows within the book.

Although I did achieve this to a certain extent, it took me ages and the shadow-casting wasn't as evident as I'd hoped and doesn't show up at all in these useless photos!  The plan was to remake the book after more concentrated study in paper engineering, but mostly I forgot all about it.  Maybe one day...  But in the meantime, revisiting my little cloud atlas I like it more than I did before.

Blackbird's Beautiful Song

Thank goodness for the cheerful blackbird whose early morning song has lifted my heart  these last few days whilst I've been stuck in bed ill.  

The enforced rest provided an opportunity to read David Mitchell's novel 'Cloud Atlas' again. I still think its a fine piece of work, the characters and created worlds resonating for a long time afterwards.

Draper Road viewed from Old Town

At last I've found time to complete this oil pastel painting of Draper Road descending down from Slack, as seen from across the valley at Old Town.

I see this view frequently as its on the route I take for my constitutional walk whenever I feel in the mood.  Obviously, things haven't looked quite like this for many many months, but unless its extremely foggy, you can always catch a glimpse of Draper Road glinting through the trees.

Sometimes in Winter its a silver curlicue in a world of black and grey, but the best way to experience Draper Road is on a hot day in late Spring, flying down the hill on a bike.  The corner dropping into the trees is quite tricky and a bit scary if you're going too fast, but once past there its an intense freewheeling descent under the dappled canopy through invisible waves of
bluebell and leafmold.  The same journey in reverse however, is a horror of sweat and toil too ghastly to dwell on ...

Sweet Birds Sing

Finally finished the bird book, my first using the flag structure invented by Hedi Kyle.
Its called 'Sweet Birds Sing' and is a celebration of small birds and an expression of sadness at the loss of trees.

The whole thing is printed from woodcut blocks apart from the text, a little song I've written, which is inkjet printed over the woodcut printed pattern. 

The cover has the same leaf pattern as the end papers, but printed in black rather than grey/green, and the closure is a length of bright green petersham ribbon.

On the whole I'm quite pleased with the way its turned out - its mostly as I envisioned it before starting and I like the way the birds poke out as a little flock.  I feel I've learned a lot and would like to make another flag book that makes even richer use of the flag structure's potential.

It would be great to make an edition of Sweet Birds Sing, but it took so long with all the hand printing, I can't see how it would be feasible to make copies that anyone could afford.

The Bird Book is hatching

I'm still working on my bird book.  I've just completed gouging a pattern of willow leaves onto a wooden block for making the paper that will become the front and back covers.  It was quite time-consuming and hard work, clearing all the wood in the spaces between the leaves.  I can't wait to try printing from this block.  To begin with I will print it in black ink on leaf green paper.

The birds are coming along too.  I'm using a print and collage process, printing onto many different coloured papers and then collaging different areas to gain a multi coloured effect.
I was first alerted to this way of working by an article on the illustrator Hannah Firmin and a wonderful image of ornate Bali slippers.  If you have recently read any of Alexander McCall Smith's 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' novels you will have seen Hannah's work on the covers.  I love both printmaking and collage but found it difficult to cut up my prints to begin with, possibly because I was trained in a strictly purist ethos.  But who makes up these rules? and why do we feel constrained to obey them?

Woodcut birds

I'm trying to make a series of woodcut prints of birds that live in the Calder valley.  If things work out the plan is to make a little book with an unusual structure.  A flag book is a variation on the concertina book and can give a kind of 3D effect.  I'm making slow progress as things keep going a bit wrong, sigh.

I've written a simple poem/song about birds and trees and I need to find a way to incorporate this text into the flag book form.  Anyway I'm making proof prints of the individual birds and experimenting with colours and papers. The bird here is a lady Siskin, not quite right yet but I'm getting there.  She's printed on a yellowing page from my ancient paper-back copy of art critic Bernard Berenson's  'The Italian Painters Of The Renaissance'. 

That book had a big influence on me when I was studying art history  many years ago. I don't think I realised then how long ago it had been written or that Berenson was a 'reactionary conservative who used his influence to discredit twentieth-century art and to preserve the notion of culture as aristocratic privilege', as I saw him described recently.  What I got out of reading him was the sense of a whole new world of colour, light and meaning welling up from the past, for which I will always be grateful. I certainly didn't feel shut out because I started life in a council house.

Another Woodcut Printmaking Course

By popular request I'm running another woodcut course at Brooklyn Studios on Sunday 21st March 2010 from 10 am to 4 pm. This is an intensive one-day course for both complete beginners and those with previous experience.

We'll be using A4 size Japanese plywood and Swiss made cutting tools to produce the printing blocks.  The trusty old A3+ relief printing press will be on active service again and participants will leave with a set of prints in both black and white and colour.

The course fee is £50 for the day including all materials and light refreshments.  A £25 deposit will secure a place on the course.  For more information or to book call in at the studios,  email me on angie.rogers(at)talk21.com, or text/phone on 0788 4307546

More on powdered charcoal

This is what Cretacolour charcoal looks like straight from the jar, a lovely velvety black that makes marvellous splat marks when dropped from height.

Powdered Charcoal

This morning I was in Bradford again, doing a demonstration and workshop for members of The Living Well Art Club.  We looked at two contrasting techniques:  sgraffito  with oil pastel on acrylic paint, and powdered charcoal applied with rag.

Its a shame that oil pastel isn't more popular as it is so direct and easily transported for outside use for example . But most people's initial experience of this versatile medium seems to be negative.  Usually its because they are using horrible 'budget' pastels that are all grease and no pigment, in sets with harsh colours and no subtlety - no wonder people hate them.  Much better to choose 4 or 5 individual, good-quality sticks in sympathetic hues.  I use Sennelier oil pastels which are very buttery. It took me a while to get used to the soft texture but was worth it for the high concentration of pigment and wide choice of colours.

The charcoal powder is wonderful, you can quickly lay on intense dark tones over large areas or drag extremely light veils of the palest grey.  Unlike my own home made powder which tends to be gritty, the Cretacolour charcoal from suppliers Great Art is extremely finely ground and moves around the paper like black mist. So far I've only used it dry but I'm looking forward to experimenting with water and other solvents.

Drawing in the sleet

Since mid January I've been working for one day a week in a primary school in central Bradford. Its a Creative Partnerships project and I'm one of the artists involved over the next couple of months. The children I work with are 9 and 10 and full of energy and fun. We are looking at aspects of identity and local environment.

Last week the plan was to make drawings of the outside of the school building, an old Victorian Board School with later additions. Travelling in on a foul morning I felt sure things would be cancelled, especially as the school is sited on an exposed and windswept hill. But no, we went ahead despite the developing sleet and freezing cold. The children were so brave and the novelty of drawing outside seemed to outweigh the physical discomforts.

This is the view for the observed drawings

And this is the children's side of things.

Sadly, I'm not allowed show their delightful faces, but if I was, you'd see cheerful grins. There is actually a roof structure over the children so its not as cruel as it might look and the paper did stay dry enough to make some interesting and detailed drawings.

Each small group of children had about 20 minutes max to complete their work, so didn't get too cold.  I on the other hand, was out there all morning and afternoon.  Thats when you fully appreciate the properties of thermal underwear, combined with multiple layers of wool.

More Woodcuts

All round good person Geoff Mitchell has kindly sent me a load of photos he took of the woodcut course on Sunday so here's a selection of the ones that best represent what we did.