Floresence is the fourth drawing I am submitting to Open Eye Gallery Edinburgh for this year's annual online Christmas exhibition On a Small Scale. All works in the exhibition measure 21x15cm in either landscape or portrait format. After I handed in my works I realised I didn't mention 'monotype' along with mapping pens on paper in the materials description on the backs of the works when I was writing the labels - I think I was too focused on spelling 'Awagami Kozo' (the paper used) correctly! So, in case you were wondering, the monotype parts are the fuzzy brown marks resembling stony textures, plus impressions of plants. These were laid down first in oil-based relief printing ink and allowed to dry thoroughly before working into and around them with black and red ultra-fine mapping pens. I probably forgot to mention it because the oil-based ink takes quite a long time to dry, and I just live with the papers around the studio in the mean time, forming ideas as to how to approach the works and what they might become. By the time I actually get around to the drawing bit they have become intrinsic to the paper itself in my mind, so it didn't occur to me to mention it.
I titled this drawing Breeze because of the large seed head wheeling in from the right hand side, breathing life and movement into the other forms - it feels fresh, like a May morning. I have been enjoying working in two colours, too. I delivered my works to the gallery yesterday, in the most dreadful weather. B drove us there in a pea-souper of a fog, particularly thick over the Forth, and heavy rainfall combined with the fog by the time we reached Edinburgh. Visibility was so poor we managed to get lost on the way and somehow ended up in Dean Village - a real treat, because neither of us have ever been there before, and it was beautiful in spite of the ghastly weather. It was also lovely to see the gallery again, I couldn't spend much time in there as B was driving around the block to pick me up outside, but I could see there was a colourful Glen Scouller exhibition (the last day of it) and I glimpsed a John Bellany painting on my way out - a shot in the arm of good art in the flesh.
Every spare minute sandwiched between my training course and home life just now is being spent on drawings for the Christmas exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh, as the handing-in deadline approaches fast. Titles for the works are beginning to come to mind as the drawings progress. This one is definitely about volcanoes and primordial life forming in plumes of red and ash grey vapours. The paper is Awagami Kozo, the pens are fine mapping pens, and the shadowy shapes are monoprints taken by rolling a small inked roller over bits of plants in oil-based relief printing ink. The training course, by the way, is brilliant! This week I have been working in a sewing cabin learning how to thread and drive industrial sewing machines to overlock, trim, embroider and construct cushions and seat covers. Basic skills, but I'm hooked. I never realised how physical sewing is - always seemingly associated with a gentle female pastime, I have found in fact I need leg muscles of steel and a lot of stamina to control those machines and get through the daily work-load. Night cramps in muscle groups unaccustomed to such work were painful. Respect to all those machinists who churn out our Primark garments.
Next week I get training in woodwork skills ... exciting! Red ink work added, a few little creatures hidden in the growth, and this one is almost finished but for a few red accents I want to add. I will be submitting this alongside up to three more, depending on how much I can get done, to the Open Eye Gallery for its Christmas exhibition On a Small Scale.
I have a busy time ahead, entering the fourth week of an eight-week training course which I am benefitting from hugely. It has been a steep learning curve! - and my dear 'honorary brother' is coming over from Germany this week to stay for 9 or 10 days. I began some new work during the week as a continuation of some drawings I made last year. I had actually forgotten about them, but rediscovered them recently amongst a pile of paper on my desk. It's great to get them out again and progress them; I never even got around to uploading them to my recent work page, so I should get on with that soon.
This was a much happier experience. The alchemy of brain, hand, pens and paper worked straight away on the small scale required for Open Eye Gallery's Christmas show. I am working with mapping pens on paper I trialled last year and it's a very nice combination. |
Welcome to my work journal - a weekly update on drawings, work in progress, doodles and day-dreaming.
I changed the website address a few months ago, so some older links on previous posts are broken. If you click one of those and it takes you to a strange page, simply replace the .co.uk after the heatherelizawalker. with weebly.com and it will work again. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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As well as the work you see here, I illustrate under the name of Binky McKee (my mother's maiden name was McKee, Binky was every single one of my great grandmother's many cats!)
If you would like to visit my Binky website, please click the picture above. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Dissolving PeopleA symbol on the footpath outside a local primary school gradually disappearing as the image breaks up and wears away until eventually it is obliterated by leaves and barely discernible. Photographed at intervals of several months between February 2021 and November 2022, oldest at the top.
(My shoes look so new in the first pic, and note the transition to new phone in the last photo). <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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April 2024
(Sorry the archives don't nest!)
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A 2013 work book, still very much in use Please note all images on this website are ©Heather Eliza Walker 2013 - 2020, and may not be used or reproduced without prior consent. |