Velvet Fire Album Front Cover Velvet Fire Album Artwork
This is the artwork for the cover of my daughter’s band, Velvet’s, debut EP, which is called Fire. It was officially released last Friday by CEG Records. You can hear samples or purchase the CD at https://cegrecords.com/velvet.
They’ve been played several times by Adam Walton on Radio Wales, who said:
“I just think that Aimee has a quality, it’s not a similarity to Cerys Mathews’ voice, it’s a similarity of spirit rather than execution which I think is highest praise as when you listen especially to early Catatonia, Cerys’ voice I just think is remarkable.”
This is a reduction linocut print I produced a few weeks back to test my new printing press. The process is also referred to as a ‘suicide print’ since additional linocut material is removed after printing each new colour, so it’s virtually impossible to recover from any mistakes.
This image was inspired by a new book called ‘Picasso Linocuts’ by Markus Müller (ISBN: 9783777439815) and by Picasso’s famous Bull series in which he worked to banish unnecessary detail from the image in order to distill the purest representation of the animal.
In the print above I was trying to sum up my impressions of the pure physicality of the cow and, especially, how such a huge bulk can be supported on such dainty legs.
As with most printmaking, ensuring the paper is registered in the same position when printing the different colours is essential, and you can see mine is very slightly off. I’ll try and post sequential photos or a video of the whole process the next time I attempt it.
Here’s a print I made of South Stack Lighthouse during an Island Art Group workshop with Howard Coles during which he introduced us to the Collagraph method of printmaking using textured wallpaper.
You Shall Have a Fishy Linocut (Ink on Paper 21cm x 30cm)
Yesterday I took part in an induction course for the new community printmaking studio that has recently been established (with funding from The Arts Council of Wales and The National Lottery) by TOGYG, The Old Goods Yard Group of Artists who are based in Treborth, Bangor. The course was conducted by Jo Alexander and was relaxed, informal and great fun. Further courses are planned and annual membership, access and materials are all very reasonably priced, so please contact TOGYG via their website or facebook page if you are interested in learning more.
I took part in a two day printmaking workshop ten days ago. It was held in the Ucheldre Centre in Holyhead and was run by Veronica Calarco, a native Australian printmaker currently based in Wales; and Eirian Llwyd, one of the co-founders of The Original Print Place / Y Lle Print Gwreiddiol.
As a novice, I must admit I found the process harder than anticipated as it was quite difficult to make controlled/precise marks. It also appears that inking the plates and setting and operating the press are technical skills that must be learned over time, but it was all tremendous fun and Veronica and Eirian gave us all a thorough introduction to the relief printing process, including how to make simple images at home without a press using polystyrene takeaway trays and a wooden spoon. Definitely worth experimenting with!
The gallery of images above contains a bit of mixed bag but, hopefully, it’s possible to catch a glimpse of the potential for creating striking imagery which printmaking offers to anyone willing to spend a bit of time learning and practising the techniques.
If you want to see how printmaking is really done, then there’s still time to catch the Printmakers in Wales exhibition which has been drawn together by The Original Print Place. It’is being held in the Ucheldre Centre and runs until 6th October 2013.
For information, we were also informed that a new Bangor Print Studio is being launched by the TOGYG group of artists. It’s situated in The Old Goodsyard, Treborth, Bangor and, I believe, is intended to operate as an drop in centre for registered users. They will also be running workshops so it’d be well worth checking them out. They also have a facebook page.
Earlier this week I took part in a 3 day Scrap Metal Workshop held in the Holyhead Ucheldre Centre and which was run by Graham Jenkinson, whose expertise and friendliness made it a really relaxed and thoroughly enjoyable affair.
It was great fun rooting through containers of metal, searching for pieces of scrap metal with interesting shapes and colours, then joining them together to form recognisable(?) objects.
There were about 6-8 of us attending each day, all of varied artistic backgrounds and ages , and most with little or no experience of welding, so it was a relief that the arc welder used to join the pieces together turned out to be far less daunting to operate than it first looked. What was most fascinating was to see the results of all creativity each day.
The two images attached are the results of my three days (as well as being my first attempts at producing gifs.)
All in all, it was great fun and I would highly recommend having a go!
My thanks to Phoenix Metals in Gaerwen, who were kind enough to donate some of the materials used.
(P.S. In case anyone is interested, I produced the gifs simply by:
1. taking several photographs
2. converting them to individual gif files using the free Paint.net (also making sure to optimise the image size for my blogging platform – n.b. WordPress)
3. dragging and dropping the converted images into the free UnFreez software in order to generate the gif
4. uploading the animated gif file to my blog (For info: WordPress required the gif images to be inserted ‘full size’ rather than ‘thumbnail’ in order for the animation to work))
