![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Two Things
Aug. 7th, 2011 05:02 pm
This is one of the rowan trees along my road; I took a photo, used Gimp to make it clearer & starker, chose a small section of the interlacing branches, and added a frame. Inkscape let me turn it into vector graphics, smoothing off the edges and eliminating speckles and inconvenient bits, and then exporting that as a DXF file let me feed it straight into the London Hackspace laser cutter. That worked to outline the image onto a piece of reclaimed hardwood (skip-dived, though not by me), and then I carved it out with my normal woodcarving tools; the laser lets me use a much more complex design than I've managed in the past.
It's now basically ready to print, or at least if I need to do any more work on it then I won't know until after I've inked it up and pulled a proof.
These are made from 300gsm recycled paper; the design is a vectorised & messed-about-with scan of an actual nettle leaf, from my garden. If you click through to Flickr, there are a lot of WIP images of the leaf in various stages; I'm entirely happy to let any of you have the SVGs if you fancy playing around with them.
I already have a customer for this pair, which makes me extremely happy! I've got two others on my worktable too, and they're quite quick to reify now I have the completed digital file. It may have taken me 8-10 hours of vector art to get the design right, but now I can just print off a dozen pairs, get out the scalpel, and apply a few layers of ink & glue. It's an interesting inversion of the printmaking technique, and it makes me very happy.
Various Things
Jun. 9th, 2011 11:25 pm1. I had my MRI results the other day: apparently, my brain is nice and healthy, with no shadows, atrophy, or reduction in brain mass. This is very good. When I get the copies I've asked for, I shall make them available.
2. I really need to finish more artwork, including getting back to printmaking properly. Part of the reason I haven't been able to do nearly as much as I'd like is lack of space. I'm considering setting up at the Hackspace for a studio session, but if I'm using proper ink then that means leaving a dozen or two prints to dry overnight/two nights there. Another part of the reason is that I don't have a reliable channel for disposing of the blessed stuff afterwards, other than letting it accumulate around the flat.
3. I really need to get more into permaculture, sustainability, and ninja hippy engineering. It makes me happy and saves me money and gets me better food, and does a lot to counteract the sense of worthlessness and irrelevance that the world often gives me. Part of the problem there, though, is a) that I'm a congenital generalist—I can do some of everything, and there's usually someone around who's better at any given thing than I am; and b) that I'm shy and nervous around strangers, and find it very hard to put myself forward.
Incidentally, I plan on visiting What will the harvest be? near Stratford on Saturday, if health & weather hold up. They have an open day, from 13:00. Anyone else interested in joining me, if you're not Slutwalking? ("Why I'm not doing that" would be an entire other post which I don't currently feel up to making. Suffice it to say that I'm strongly in favour of the event.)
2. I really need to finish more artwork, including getting back to printmaking properly. Part of the reason I haven't been able to do nearly as much as I'd like is lack of space. I'm considering setting up at the Hackspace for a studio session, but if I'm using proper ink then that means leaving a dozen or two prints to dry overnight/two nights there. Another part of the reason is that I don't have a reliable channel for disposing of the blessed stuff afterwards, other than letting it accumulate around the flat.
3. I really need to get more into permaculture, sustainability, and ninja hippy engineering. It makes me happy and saves me money and gets me better food, and does a lot to counteract the sense of worthlessness and irrelevance that the world often gives me. Part of the problem there, though, is a) that I'm a congenital generalist—I can do some of everything, and there's usually someone around who's better at any given thing than I am; and b) that I'm shy and nervous around strangers, and find it very hard to put myself forward.
Incidentally, I plan on visiting What will the harvest be? near Stratford on Saturday, if health & weather hold up. They have an open day, from 13:00. Anyone else interested in joining me, if you're not Slutwalking? ("Why I'm not doing that" would be an entire other post which I don't currently feel up to making. Suffice it to say that I'm strongly in favour of the event.)
Printmaking with children!
Mar. 25th, 2011 08:24 pmI spent this afternoon running a printmaking workshop for small children (half a dozen, 5-8) at London Hackspace. I don't have the energy and coherence right now to tell you much about how it came out, so I'm just going to picspam instead. (All the parents have given their consent for photographs on the Internet, because I know you were wondering about that.)
I will say that it was great fun for all of us, we only had one very minor self-stabbing, and it's reminded me just how much I love children's art.
( +4 )
I will say that it was great fun for all of us, we only had one very minor self-stabbing, and it's reminded me just how much I love children's art.
( +4 )
Printmaking - first attempt
May. 16th, 2008 03:55 am
Relief printing from lino, with water-based ink on good paper. I need to practice with the gouges some more, but I'm reasonably happy with this.
