2012 in pictures

 It was tricky, yet fun, to cut from my photos my favourite from 2012, but I did it, and here they are!

Favourite Blake quote

Shack with the best view

Laughed so hard I nearly cried

Mountain air

Sam the ripper

French reflections

Cornish sunset

Mates in Devon

Autumn snow

Shepherd's hut times

There were so many photos I couldn't include! All the weddings, holidays, weekends and general fun had to be left out. It's not often I blog about personal things but I think this will be a nice memory for me of a great year.

Christmas time

 A few snaps from Christmas day are below.

My favourite christmas tree decoration

Feasting table

Handprinted labels in the pile

YUM

... and YUM again

Christmas kisses

What a lovely, lovely Christmas we had surrounded by family and animals.

Final Editions

It's the end of term and I feel oddly exhausted. This week has been full in the evenings but I've also been editioning my final prints this week on Somerset paper which is a looong job. Here they are:

Beachy Head

Devon Coast

Curlew's Cry (words by Alastair McIntosh)

Triptych

I've got a party to go to tonight and lots of Christmas shopping to do besides. I've got a feeling that I'm going to get geeky about present wrapping this year - will let you know how I get on. Happy weekend, everyone.

Monoprinting

I'm beginning (very much only beginning!) to get the hang of monoprinting. I managed 13 A2 monoprints this week - and the last three were starting to show what I wanted to say. I'm going to take the final three images (below) and translate them into etchings for my final piece (due next week).

Monoprint turned into an etching

 Apart from all this printing, it's been a busy but great week. We made a pie on Monday night, I did another photoshoot for the Marshmallowists on Tuesday and I'm desperately trying to fit in my Christmas shopping round the edges. We've also booked to go to Norfolk over year - I'm looking forward to the holiday as well as doing lots more sketching.

Chinecole, coins and landscapes

I got back into mark marking and mixed media this week. I also learned to stretch a canvas, using, amongst other tricks, the mighty mitre. Our lovely technician Emma helped me with the whole process and my resulting picture (partly created using coin rubbing) is a whopping 1x1.8m. The rest of the time I spent happily tinkering away in the print room.

Whopper

Bosham marsh

Hornberg runs

Savoldo's Wilderness with Chinecole

I'm spending the weekend in Hackney - looking forward to having a bit of time to catch up with myself and with friends. Fingers crossed that the weather stays as beautiful as it is today.

A Wales of a Time

The boy and I went to Wales last weekend (lucky us) to our much-beloved haunt, the Gower. The weather was beautiful, as was the light. We had a fantastic surf on Sunday - well, it was fantastic for me on account of being small and clean... we even saw a seal playing in the waves! Our trip, I think,  affected my images this week - I couldn't stop thinking about landscapes and light.

Gower sunset

Gower sketch

Swiss Alps in oils - Uncle Tony's view down the valley

Happy to be back in the print room

The storm we've been experiencing seems wild. I hope all my friends and family in the west country haven't been too battered by its force.

Scribbles in the British Museum

We did glass work this week (so cool) but the kiln is now misbehaving so I'll have to wait till next week to see, and share, my first attempts in glass. In the meantime, here are some scribbles done in the British Museum last Friday.

Elgin Marble horse charging

Goya's meaty bulls

God-ward man in spit and ink

I'm doing some more product photography for the wonderful Marshmallowists who were featured in the Sunday Times Style magazine on page 7 this week. Go The Marshmallowists! I'll keep you all posted as to how I get on with snapping their luscious creations.

Jaguars

This week saw me doing a 2D design project, with the somewhat unusual brief of a marketable design derived from an image seen at the Pre-Raphaelite Avant Garde exhibition. I won't bore y'all with how my project developed but my issue with the exhibition's rigid depiction of nature, coupled with a bronze jaguar found in the V&A, ended eventually in this:

Wallpaper design

I then knocked off a few prints to use as cards. Speaking of which, thanks loads to those of you who have bought etchings - your support is much appreciated.

Cats abound

I love lino.

Oh Eden

Here is my version of the Garden of Eden (as described by Milton) for my diorama project. I ended up making an animation of the snake entering the garden through a cunning little snake hole in the wall. Apparently, 'paradise' comes from Persian and means 'walled garden', hence the back wall of the model is made to look like a brick wall in texture.

Latex tree and the start of the story

Here comes trouble

Paradise lost

 I really enjoyed creating my visual version of Eden - and learning the skills needed to do so. The mirrored pool you might be able to see is a nod to the Islamic version of paradise.

Apple a day

It's taken me ages to get round to writing this (more on why anon) but here is one of the paintings I did last week. I worked hard to make the apple as shiny as it was in reality.

I'm writing this from bed listening to the news and my thoughts are very much with all those on the other side of the Atlantic.

Etching

I could write pages about how cool using Intaglio etching and printing is - but I won't. It's a complicated and exact process (used to great effect by Rembrandt, Goya and Picasso) but seems akin to alchemy when you peel the first printed piece of paper from your etched plate. I really clicked with this way of working and here are four of the prints I made over the last week.

French Surf

Lighthouse Coastline

 

 

 

Autumn Leaves

View of Burgh Island

Finally, here is a funny strip of the boy and I at Muffin and Nick's wedding on my birthday. I'm a bowler-hatted tiger, while he appears to be some sort of cow-bear-butterfly concoction. What a party that was.

Mind Bending

The title is a tribute to the geometric drawing I did this week (labelled so by my Dad). Great week, not much time to write more as I'm off to Devon with the boy for Muffin and J-Lo's wedding which happens to fall on my birthday! It's going to be brilliant, I'm sure. The other photo is of a series of 15 drawing all done using a combination of rules in black and finally, here is a (very bad quality) snap of my lovely new arty mates.

More images, more words

I got told this week that I should write more on this blog. This goes directly against what someone said in the summer, but hey, I like writing so I am happy to go with this one! Despite having a horribly heavy cold (I blame those young' uns), college this week has been amazing. We had two more days of life drawing; one focusing on line, the other, on tone - followed by two days of 'Mark Making' (my piece is HUGE: 1.75m by 1m). We then looked at animation briefly. It is all making me wonder where I will go next - perhaps more study, either in fine art or animation possibly (the latter is thought to be the 'sensible' career move). I'm not really concentrating on my next move though as I'm just loving having this much time to devote to art. Today, we spent the afternoon in the Courtauld looking at the leap into "Modernism' through Manet. It's fascinating stuff. And apart from art stuff, I got treated to a super lovely swanky meal by the boy on Thursday. What a star he is.