Interim Chapter: thoughts about the final book for Chapter 10

I have decided to part ways with the theme for chapter 6 of this module and do my own printing theme, reduction linocut instead of  making a foam printing block.  It seems a good time to think ahead to the final chapter and combine the effort required for this chapter and that required for chapter 10.

Looking back over my architectural photographs of King's Lynn I liked the idea of a panoramic print of the Guild Hall. It's a long highly decorative building which will  lends itself well to a lino print and could be spread out with a horizontal base, dividing the facade into sections that can be folded for a concertina / accordion fold book.

 

I've cobbled together some quick sketches:

Having thought about the front, I then started to think about the reverse of the book. A number of ideas occurred, including a timeline of this rather old town that dates to before the Norman Conquest. However, the town has a rather interesting history of producing carousels and carousel horses - Savages Engineering works - and since I live in a house that was designed for a Savages Engineering senior manager or something like that, I thought I could bring the book to a close on a rather personal note. Extremely sketchy drawing to follow:

Claire Gordon

14/08/21

Repeating Patterns (M6 Chpt 5)

 I looked at encaustic floor tiles in my last chapter and decided to continue with this theme for chapter 5, this may not have been the best idea as I think it interfered with my creative thought process. However.....

I worked with four different patterns: a) a diagonally meeting tile, b) a tile corner pattern, c) a tessellated pattern, d) two elements of a tile. 

Repeat 1

This is a very simple repeating pattern but the crossing point gave the tile interest:

1) Using an irregular grid, painting in brusho powder. This gave a faintly arabic effect:

2) Using a square grid with pastels and pencil

3) Keeping the pattern but using colour and resist: sorry no working pictures

Pattern 2

This was the corner piece of a medieval encaustic tile.

I painted a sheet of newspaper in black gesso and made numerous repeats of this detail:

The original pattern:

And playing with pattern ideas:

Pattern 3)

Tesselation

I used this pattern first in conjunction with the patterns above, to create a double layer of repeating patterns:

Laying the grid over some of the ideas for activity 2:

I decided to work with  pattern below:

The design transferred and cleaned up:

I forgot to take working pictures: the piece was worked in crayon, brusho and lumitec fine gold paints, dropped into wet brusho:

Second and third pieces for this were worked in black ink on white paper. Firstly alternating squares and secondly rectangles of varying width:

Fourth pattern

Tile details:

I worked two ideas for this piece. Firstly painting on book pages:

Creating a circular pattern. I started this with the notion of a circular stained glass window going round my head. I changed tack after the first go and re thought the idea:

Claire Gordon

26/07/21

Taking a Closer Look (M6 Chpt 4)

 I was worried about finding suitable drawing matter for architectural detail - not sure why really, as I realised fairly quickly there was no end of possibilities. Where possible I have kept to medieval details as my overall subject is medieval King's Lynn. I have completed four pieces or work for this chapter, really owing to time constraints as I would have liked to try out more things and techniques. However the chapter is now done.

Three of the detail pieces use techniques I used before and one tries out a new technique I found by chance in one of Beany and Littlejohn's lovely little pamphlets (expect more where that came from).

Subject one:

Medieval Statue/relief carving Head: Observational and completed coloured piece, in crayon, watercolour and ink. This was a fairy challenging piece to start with and was a logical start given ink had been the subject of the previous chapter.

Subject Two

Column head / decoration. Observational drawing then worked in oil pastel and 6b pencil:

Subject three

Late Medieval embossed leather wallpaper - not of the easiest of things to reproduce especially as I chose watercolour, colouring pencil and pencil. I completed half of this image coloured. However the observational drawing went very well:

Subject 4

Worn medieval encaustic floor tile: I chose a chequered tile for this piece and so an observational drawing isn't really that important. However I used a technique used by Beany and Littlejohn, and used wax crayon distressed with a scalpel and then colour washed with brusho. I think I can fairly honestly say this is the first time I've found a good use for those powders. I'll definitely have another go with this technique.

Claire Gordon

08/07/2021