Reading List

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
(Just one book this month, but all 1000 or so pages!)

This is a devastatingly good book. Disturbing in it’s core theme, and often difficult to read comfortably - this is a book that made me question myself on many levels, even down to the point where I was unsure of whether or not I should be enjoying reading it. This book has received prizes and awards internationally, and plaudits from the most respectable reviewers, and rightly so; this is one hell of a book.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
Mark Twain

Playlist

Solitary Man by Johnny Cash
Höstluft by Library Tapes
Happt Soup by Baxter Dury
Eddie, Old Bob, Dick and Gary by Tenpole Tudor
This Time Around by Green On Red
Love, Ire and Song by Frank Turner
The Broken Man by Matt Elliott
Smash It Up – The Damned Anthology 1967 -1987 by The Damned
 L’air De Rien by Tété 
4-Trackaganza! and Raw by Chris Murray
NV3 by Nouvelle Vague
Hindustani Slide Guitar by Debashish & Subhashish Bhattacharya
Lumière and Post Industrial Blues by Bob Brozman

Leeds Print Festival

I am pleased to announce that I will be taking part in the inaugural Leeds Print Festival in January 2012.

I will be participating in an evenings printing and bookbinding on Friday 27th from 7pm with a number of other ‘printerly’ types – I will be producing some limited edition books and prints right there! Come along and see exactly what I and my fellow exhibitionists get up to…

There is a print fair on Saturday 28th 11am – 6pm where prints of all descriptions can be purchased from a wide variety of sellers, myself included! I will be selling sets of linocut and letterpress greetings cards, linocut and screenprinted art prints, as well as a few digital prints and some etchings. There will of course, be handmade sketchbooks for sale .

I have been busy printing and getting all my unfinished things finished! Many long evenings in the garage printshop!

On the Sunday there are three talks by creatives who are passionate about print; Si Scott and Generation Press have already been confirmed and you will need to purchase a tickets (only 20 squid!)  if you want to attend. Go here, buy yours now)

If you can make it on either day, come over and say ‘Hi’ – don’t be shy and maybe buy a print or two if you like!

Lots more information on their website, and you can follow on twitter and facebook if you’re that way inclined…

The Christmas Post

Even More Super!

“…And at the end of this session I have a fairly convincing image emerging”

Another session, another day. The handle of the Super 8 is covered in a textured plastic veneer for extra grip, so I needed to create a quality randomised texture, which means making my own rather than relying on any of the preset textures, which are small sections repeated and fairly obvious about it too.

I begain by rooting through my collection of stock images. I do have images of leather grain, but they do not have the contrast I need for the next stages. What I used was a large image of gravel which was placed into Illustrator without any editing.

Using the Livetrace tool, I opted for ‘one colour logo’ from the options menu and expanded it to create the vectors:

I then selected the whole block and dragged it into the swatches palette. The handle shapes were then filled with a dark grey. The texture fill was also applied and a little fine tuning with the opacity settings I got the effect I wanted:

The right side of the camera is now complete:

The left side involved a fair amount of copying and reflecting, with some small adjustments to some of the gradients, and now needs its unique detailing…

And here it is in it’s final state. Click on it – it’s quite big.

I’m am pretty pleased with the result – there are no special tricks here, just close observation, and using the right tools for the job. A true orthographic would also have a plan and bottom view, but these did not add anything new to the image, so I decided to omit them.

Copies of this images (along with a whole lot of other stuff) will be available to purchase at the Leeds Print Festival in January – more of which very soon!

Super!

After all this ‘proper’ drawing mularky, I felt the need to do some vector work! Inspired by this Sankyo Super CM 300 ( - a super 8 – just repaired and awaiting for a roll of film to test it!) I made some reference photographs and decided to begin with an orthographic projection – sides, top, bottom front and back views, and possibly a three-quarter view to follow.

I began by taking a few measurements and drawing the outer shape:

Like the body, I used the shape tools – rectangles and ellipses and the pathfinder tools. I decided to add a little curvature here – a true orthographic projection would show the lens side on – without any angle, but I guess a bit of artistic licence can be taken here – I can always change it later if it doesn’t look right.

All the main parts and the key lines of the details were created using the same process:

Untill I finished up with a decent line image.

I think that the lens works well too. There is a little unfinished area around the push button on the handle. This has been deliberately left to be resolved later – I will be making a handle up/down illustration and need to keep this area flexible enough for when I assemble all the parts together. I can use much of this drawing for the other side – reflecting it horizontally and replacing the details.

And now its time to get the details sorted and refine the line qualities.

I couldn’t help getting carried away into the tonal work though. Just a test for now as I may find better ways as I work on the other views…

A couple of days have passed since I last worked on this illustration and on reflection I was a little premature with my tonal work. I had worked purely in shades of grey without really thinking but on closer inspection there is more warmth overall, and some variations between the different metals and the plastic.

The next attempt was on a side view, and I ended up over-compensating the colour – this looks far too rich on the lens, but I can tone it down as I build up the tones elsewhere. The lens has gained the illusion of form through the careful use of gradient fills:

Even the screws got the full treatment!

And then onto the detail panels, which were built up in stages…

I am very pleased with the results – as well as using the photographic reference, I was also studying the camera itself and made quite a few small adjustments get the details just right…

And at the end of this session I have a fairly convincing image emerging:

The Golden Age Of Photography

Take a look at these little fellows. A small collection of carte de visite by early commercial photographers.

The albumen prints are pasted onto thick board, some gilt-edged, and are richly decorated with type on the reverse:

These were produced at the time when commercial photography was becoming more widely accessible and affordable to the English middle classes, who wished to emulate the aristocracy by commissioning portraits. At Portraits in oils were rather expensive, time consuming affairs, the opportunity to commission a portrait using newly fashionable photographic processes – often having them painted over to resemble an oil painting – was just the thing…

More images of all the cards can be viewed here.

Tibetan Sutra

The latest addition to my collection – a Tibetan prayer sutra. I don’t know much about this, only that is was recently brought back from Lanzarote (of all places!) but a little internet research brought up some interesting information.

Click for much bigger images…

It is quite likely to have been printed at the Dege Sutra Printing House in Sichuan, which claims to produce 70% of all the Tibetan Bhuddist scriptures. The printing house is well known, and has been printing these for 280 years using the same traditional methods. The blocks are hand carved from maple and there are about 217,000  blocks in their archive.

The paper is quite thick, clearly handmade, and has the discolouring and distress to allow me to assume this is quite old – images on their website show whiter, (marginally smoother) paper, but it is almost impossible to tell for sure -  I’ll never know if this a new print from an old block. Nevertheless, I love the texture of the paper and the imprint the block has made, as well as its pedigree.

Morning!

I’m cutting a few new typographic lino blocks and decided to do a dry run and emboss the first one, just to get a visual check on the details…

I’m pretty happy with the results, so it’s off to print:

I’m going to run a magenta over some of the lighter ones, out of register so that the colours ‘swim’ a bit. I printed these off a few days later: