Merry Christmas

Wishing you all a Joyful Christmas and a Peaceful New Year.

Christmas cards

All my Christmas cards have been printed and posted, so I can now reveal how they were made.

Using white gesso, I printed my image onto Frisk Black Pad  paper.  As I intended to cut round the figures I didn't bother to clear away all the excess lino (particularly round the heads).  Once dry, the prints were randomly coloured with acrylic inks, plus a bit of gold splatter.  More detail was added with gold and silver gel pens before the images were cut out and glued to A6 card blanks.  A computer printed insert included the seasonal greeting and our address.

I produced about 24 hand-printed cards, but still needed a few more.  As time was getting on, I finished off with a computer printed version to which I added the gold and silver gel pen details for a bit of sparkle.

Lino print - white gesso on black paper, with acrylic inks added when dry

 Design layout, lino block and some of the finished cards

Close-up of the finished image - "Three Kings"

Expressive Textured Winter Landscapes in Mixed Media

I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday's workshop with Soraya French.  With some careful packing, I managed to fit all the suggested materials into a rucksack and a shopping bag so my journey on the bus was not too fraught (apart from delays with rush hour traffic and road works).

Soraya's teaching style was relaxed and easy to follow and she was able to advise and encourage each student individually.  Her first demonstration painting was split into two parts so that we could prepare our paper or canvas surface with various textures (gels, gesso, pastes, collage etc.) and a base wash, before we forgot that part of the process.  This also allowed our work to dry before following up with painting, over-painting, glazing and refining with heavy body acrylic, ink, pastel and wax crayon.

I changed my mind about the sketches I was going to use as my reference.  The first was from a small study of the Neolithic stones at Avebury.

Avebury Stones - pen and watercolour 3" x 5"

I find it quite difficult to relinquish my "watercolour" mindset when using other mediums, so these workshop efforts are quite rough, but I did feel I managed to overcome that to some extent.

Ink, collage, texture paste, gesso, pumice gel, acrylic
and some final touches of pastel and wax crayon

This was my next reference sketch:

On the Polar Road from Narvik - pen and watercolour  5" x 5"

This interpretation was definitely a bit messy!
Ink, texture paste, gesso, acrylic, wax crayon

For my final attempt I decided I might have more success if I followed Soraya's second demonstration piece more closely.

Ink, texture paste, acrylic, with some wax crayon and pastel

I used Hahnemuhle Britannia watercolour paper (approx. 9" x 12") for these acrylic paintings and it certainly stood up well to the battering it got.  The only downside was that the low-tack masking tape I used to attach it to my painting board pulled away some of the paper surface when I tried to remove it.

Urban sketch outing

With several of our group busy on the run-up to Christmas, only a handful of us turned up today's sketch meeting.  Nevertheless, we enjoyed beverages and savouries (plus inspirational ideas) at the National Trust cafe at Swindon's Designer Outlet Village, taking advantage of our window seats to sketch the outside views.

Pen and mixed media sketch on a pre-prepared page
of the Hahnemuhle Grey Book

Afterwards, we visited the Christmas Market at STEAM Museum where all the various craft stalls were laid out in between the various steam engines and other railway-related exhibits.