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Work In Progress

Copper Plate Etching, Twinkle, twinkle Little Bat!

by Angela 7th February 201630th March 2017

I have wanted to do a bat image for some time now. I have always loved bats and finally got round to joining the Bat Conservation Trust in 2014. I did in an evening class in Cardiff Print Workshop in September 2015 so decided to make a copper plate etching of a bat. I wanted to use some text to go with it and for a while could not think of anything. Then I remembered one of my favourite bits from Alice In Wonderland when the Mad Hatter sings “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! I didn’t have the confidence to draw directly on to the plate so put the image on tracing paper and then transferred to the plate by going over the lines with pencil – similar to the process I use with rubber stamps.

As with the rubber stamps I typed the text on a typewriter and then scanned it and enlarged it. It was easier than I thought to draw it/scratch out the stop-out on the plate.The plate is then etched with ferric chloride and you can see the result below.

Once the line drawing was etched I pulled the first print.

The final print (below) is not as I imagined and unfortunately the text was lost in the process. I messed up the plate a bit but, it wasn’t a total loss, thanks to the guidance of Bill Chambers the tutor who helped me ‘rescue’ it 🙂 I still like it though, the bat coming out of the darkness. After completing the image I wanted to try it on a rubber stamp to see the results – and I did. I will post pictures and the process soon 🙂 Also if you want to try your hand at printing either as a total beginner or you want to try a new process like I did there are several courses at Cardiff Print Workshop I thoroughly enjoyed mine 🙂

7th February 201630th March 2017 4 comments

Artists Books Book Arts Bookbinding Gulls Work In Progress

There’s No Such Thing As Seagulls, Work In Progress & Finished Book – Personal Histories Exhibition

by Angela 23rd February 201523rd May 2018

There’s No Such Thing As Seagulls

This book was made for the Personal Histories Exhibition. It was not the book I first intended to make – I was going to use the Twinkle Story – however, I just could not make this book work. I wanted it to have a glossy cover but could not get any paper that satisfied all my requirements i.e. the look and the feel, printed well, and could withstand a bit of man handling (!) when gluing and using the bone folder. I was disappointed, I thought I wouldn’t be able to take part, but one morning (lying in bed!) the idea for a new book came to me – it came from this blog post about one of my typewriter ramblings.

Initially I didn’t think the book would be suitable for the Personal Histories project, but then when I started to think about (really hard ’til it hurt!) I realised it was actually perfect. As I made the book and started to type up the Read Me that goes into the back pocket I realised how much it was a part of my personal history, much more than I had ever realised before.

Another thing that happened, was that everything seemed to come together really quickly. I already had all the paper and card (for the cover) – left overs from other projects. The 2 stamps for the images I used were from 2 other books I had made. That is not to say it was a really easy to make – there were the usual hiccups along the way, failed experiments and my printer breaking down.

All Covers and Signatures Cut

This is probably the simplest book I have ever made in terms of construction – not a hardcover, no gluing or cutting book board. The most difficult thing was all the typing. The typed text in the book pages was easy. I’ve come up with my own technique for alignment and measurement on the typewriter and there wasn’t a lot of text. However! I decided to be put a short ‘Read Me’ at the back in pocket – it was half an A4’s worth of typing. My original intention was to type it once get a good copy – scan this in and then print 10 copies (the book is an edition of 10). My printer had other ideas….so I ended up typing all 10.

When I started I thought there is no way I can type this 10 times – I’d done a few practice runs – but in the end I managed it. I made mistakes but I learned ways to amend them. My RSA I typing training started to come back to me. I learned to touch type in South Bristol College in the early 90’s on an electronic IBM and got a distinction in my exam! I remember buying my little typing kit from WH Smith with the special pencil eraser and brush etc. Its weird to think now that stationery shops sold stuff like that. I remember part of the training was correcting your mistakes and the tricks and techniques came back to me, I had totally forgotten about this even though I still have my certificate! Unfortunately the only photo I have of all 10 copies typed up is this awful one below. My hands were probably trembling after all the typing!

Silver-Reed Silverette – Read Me Typed Up

So not only did the book tell the story of part of my personal history – the making of it resurrected another part that I had forgotten about. I began to think about my long relationship with typewriters. The first typewriter I used was a very old Underwood (looking at photos it was probably a 1930s one). My mother found some of my old typewriter ramblings when she was doing a clear-out at home and posted them to me. Looking back on it I was about 12 when I started playing with the typewriter. I also forgot how much concentration it takes when you are using a manual typewriter – it was quite exhausting! You may also notice my lovely grey felt typewriter pad in the photo above. Very good for muffling the sound – especially since my Silver-Reed Silverette is the noisiest of all my typewriters. I got it from My Typewriter It was expensive but I looked all over and this seemed the thickest and best quality. It fits all my manual typewriters (5 in total now!).

It wasn’t until I got right to the end of the book and had nearly finished that I realised that if it was not for the events described in the story I might not even be making books today. Then I felt a bit stupid in totally overlooking this and not realising it was such a big part of my personal history. The ‘Read Me’ explanation is similar to the blog post but slightly amended, with some other thoughts. If you’ve got good eyesight you may be able to read it from the photo below.

There’s No Such Thing As Seagulls- Artists Book

There’s No Such Thing As Seagulls- Read Me

I can’t fully remember how I first started to use typewriter text for my rubber stamps but I seem to remember it has a lot to with font snobbery! Why else would I torture myself with choosing a really difficult serif font to carve instead of nice plain Verdana or Tahoma. I carved the text for the cover using the same method I had used for Nest Building Perils & Pleasures – all the text in that book was carved by hand (I must have been mad).

Text Transferred to Rubber Stamp

Carving Text on Rubber Stamp

All Text Carved on Rubber Stamp – Test Print

I am really happy with the way the cover text looks and it printed beautifully with a Memento Grey Flannel ink pad.

There's No Such Thing As Seagulls - Artists Book

There's No Such Thing As Seagulls - Artists Books

I used a 5-hole pamphlet stitch to sew it and decided to round the corners. I used an X-Cut 5mm corner punch for this. It did a good job on the thick 250gsm Somerset paper for the signatures and the Daler Rowney Canford Card (Dreadnought Grey) for the cover.

Sewing 5-Hole Pamphlet Stitch

I am quite happy with the end result and it has been posted to the lovely Robyn Foster who is coordinating this exhibition. I would like to take this opportunity to also say thanks to Robyn for all her hard work and patience organising this. Sounds like a nightmare of a task!

You can see all the Work In Progress and Completed Book here.

23rd February 201523rd May 2018 0 comment

Work In Progress

Twinkle Badge Story, Work In Progress

by Angela 23rd April 20134th October 2018

Twinkle © D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd

This is one of the 3 or 4 books I am working on. Its based on a piece of art I made for my MA below. It is a very short story about the Twinkle badge I took from my older sister. I want to make a very small book and I want the cover to look like an old Twinkle annual I have. I have been experimenting with lots of glossy photo papers and brochure papers to try to get the same affect as the Twinkle Annual.

The best result so far is from Kodak Premium Photo Paper. Some print beautifully and give great colours but when you start to glue them to the book board you get all sorts of problems. Lots of screechy moments! With some paper the minute you start to touch it with the bonefolder it rubs the image off. I know I am not using the paper for the purpose it was designed for so I shouldn’t really complain. One of the best looking papers was Brilliant Supreme Glossy Photo Paper but it was just too thick and does not come in a lighter weight. It was a nightmare to glue and fold. Its the one at the back middle with the tear – I got a bit vigorous with the Teflon folder!


Twinkle Story, Centrespace Gallery, Bristol

I’ve also included the original photo of me wearing the ‘stolen’ badge 🙂 plus the complete story and the Twinkle Annual below.

Nannette & Angela (Angela wearing 'stolen' Twinkle Badge

My older sister used to get a comic called Twinkle. A free badge was promised in the next issue, she waited and waited and was so excited about it, but when it arrived I cried until I got it. She talked about it for years…how I took the Twinkle badge. A few years ago I found an old Twinkle badge at home, I put it in a presentation case and gave it to her as part of her Christmas present. After thirty years she got her badge back.

Twinkle © D.C.Thomson & Co., Ltd

23rd April 20134th October 2018 6 comments

Artists Books Book Arts Rubber Stamps Work In Progress

When I Am An Old Lady – Work In Progress

by Angela 9th March 20134th October 2018

I suppose I have posted in the wrong order. I have shown the completed book before the Work In Progress. I just wanted to a little of my stamping process.

All the signatures for the book were done on my typwriter first. Lots of fun – typying 15 books by hand 🙂 I then did the stamping. The top image is the typed signature ready to stamp.

For the old lady stamp the main image outline is done in grey – below. I had a separate stamp to do her jumper and I stamped this in grey also.

Then I had another separate stamp to do the blue rinse for her hair.

The blue ink I was using was too strong. So I inked the stamp first and stamped on a scrap piece of paper and then stamped the image. This gave the more faded blue I was looking for. If you look at the top image you can see where I have stamped the hair (right hand side of the image).

As you can see it is all very low tech. Just 2 rulers to line up the paper, but I like the simplicity of this print process.

With some stamps I thought it might be easier to do the main stamp and hand colour the other bits, but although its a bit fiddly to cut a separate stamp e.g. for the hair – it is much quicker just to stamp the hair than to faff around with a brush 🙂

9th March 20134th October 2018 3 comments

Artists Books Book Arts Work In Progress

Brain Soap, Work In Progress

by Angela 9th October 20124th October 2018

I am currently working on about 4 books (!) One of them is called Brain Soap. This is the first image I have been working on. I experimented with stamping/embossing the text on to several bars of soap – not easy! And this is the final result. This book explores ideas that have been floating around my head about mental wounds/hurts expressed as the physical and also how you could ‘heal’ mental scars by physical means. This is expressed as a series of wishes – one of them being how I wished I had some brain soap to wash all the gunk off my brain. I was just thinking how wonderful it could be if you clean all the accumulated crud off your brain and clear your head. I am not sure how I feel about this image at the moment. I have spoken before about having an exact image in your head and getting it to come out exactly as you imagined – here. This image is not as I imagined. I think I’ve looked at so much I can’t see it anymore.

9th October 20124th October 2018 3 comments

Print Printmaking Work In Progress

Frozen Stars, Final Image

by Angela 6th November 201119th February 2017

Ever since I heard the term frozen star (the original name for black holes) in a book called the Physics of Start Trek I have been fascinated by it. I have been working on some frozen star images and this is the final print. I really liked the other 2 images I made but I was not happy with the way they were printing. They look good on screen but don’t print so well. Maybe I shouldn’t be such a perfectionist fusspot, but I just didn’t think they were good enough.

This is going to be a Limited Edition of 100 and I have chosen 4 different print sizes. They print beautifully on Somerset Enhanced Velvet. Somerset is my favourite paper at the moment. It really suits the images I am working with now and gives great colour representation and lovely texture too. It is a Giclee print using pigment inks. My HP B9180 despite some hiccups and shrieky moments (bits falling out!) always prints beautifully. I just love the results I get from it – otherwise it would have gone out the window a long time ago for all the stress it has caused me 🙂

When I was making this I bought some silver stars. I started freezing them it looked good, but there was something missing. I was racking my brain trying to think of ideas – what could I use? I was walking up the stairs in work one day and I saw something shiny on the step. I picked it up and it was a little blue star – just the right size – no idea where it came from. I added it to the ice that was freezing and it looked right, just what the piece needed.

6th November 201119th February 2017 6 comments

Print Printmaking Work In Progress

Frozen Stars – Work In Progress

by Angela 5th April 201119th February 2017

I first heard the words ‘frozen star’ when I read a book called The Physics of Star Trek a few years ago. It was the term first used to describe black holes. I just loved the words and have been trying to find ‘stars’ to freeze since then. I first started freezing things in ice for my Snow Queen work. For some reason I thought it would be just for that project and that would be end of it, and that I should stop working with ice, but I keep seeing things and thinking – I wonder what that would look like frozen? – or hearing words like frozen stars and getting inspired. I suppose its a lesson that should never say never and just go with it 🙂

5th April 201119th February 2017 7 comments

Book Art Object II Work In Progress

Nestbuilding…

by Angela 20th November 2010

Tools

Just some pictures of my work in progress for Book Art Object II using the Janet Winterson text. as inspiration. The Eyries of Books Extract started me thinking about building nests/safe havens, because the boys had burrowed into the books to make a safe place for themselves. Somehow this seemed like nest building to me.

I’ve started off doing some experiments with rubber stamps. I meant to do a tutorial because Jane asked about this when I did a post on my blog about the Homemade Rubber Stamp Workshop. I only realised half way through that I should have photographed the whole process. Text is quite fiddly to do with rubber stamps so I am not sure if its the best example for a tutorial.

I used the ‘Big Mistakes’ rubber which was actually very nice to carve, but not sure how durable it will be after its been used a lot. You basically get your image – in this case text – and go over it with pencil, put this on to the eraser and go over the back of it with the pencil so the image transfers to the rubber – it will transfer over mirror image because you start off with the image the right way round. Cut round the edge of the image with a scalpel as if you were using it as pen, cut at an angle away from the image so you don’t undercut it. Once you’ve done all the image you can stamp it to see what else needs to be cut away. I use a lino cut tool for the large bits. Keep stamping until you get it as you want. This is only ‘edtited highlights’ of the process, I will do a proper tutorial soon.

The text here was typewriter text with a picture of the original below. I doubled the size to make it easier to carve – original size would have been impossible. I like the way the text has turned out. I think this was another one of those experiments which I thought wouldn’t work – and also was almost hoping wouldn’t – because I know its going to be difficult to do if I decide to use it 🙂

20th November 2010 2 comments

Print Work In Progress

Weapons of Hurt & Healing

by Angela 13th November 2010

Hope is the thing with feathers…

Heavenly hurt it gives us, we can find no scar…

Narcotics cannot still the tooth that nibbles at the soul…

She dealt her pretty words like blades…

My life had stood a loaded gun…

———————————————————————————-

Finally finished this series of prints. All the lines are from Emily Dickinson poems. I think the reason it took me so long to finish was I thought there should be more ‘healing’ images, but then I realised the feather was enough to heal all.

13th November 2010 5 comments

Work In Progress

Eperiments With Ice

by Angela 3rd October 2010

Just doing some more experiments with freezing stuff in ice. I’ve started off freezing a feather and thought it looked so nice at this stage I would do a few test photos. I will gradually add more water to completely freeze it, but may end up going back to this image. This is for a series I’ve been doing called Weapons of Hurt & Healing. I’ve had the ideas in my head for some time and done must of the ‘hurt’ images. As I came to do the ‘healing’ I could really only think of one image which was the feather, which represents, birds, nature and wildlife. Now I am a bit unsure about the title for the series, especially after my boyfriend asked “how can you have a weapon of healing?”. In some ways I quite like the idea because the concept of a ‘weapon’ of healing sounds good. What do others think?

Initially I was thinking I needed more ‘healing’ images for the series, but then I realised that you don’t need several weapons of healing. Sometimes all it takes is one thing to heal you.

3rd October 2010 7 comments

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