Little walks

So I'm in my first year at Nottingham university, studying art history, and for one of my extra modules, I'm taking 'book art'. Ive decided to look at all of the unconventionally beautiful parts of nature, gnarly trees and all! The campus is truly beautiful this autumn, so I've been going on a few walks around the lakeside, taking photos along the way and also being attacked by squirrels!

Chiswick house

on an unusually sunny weekend in february (or was it january) i decided to visit chiswick house. its a really nice big house but i mainly went for the big grounds. theres really nice trees and greenhouses and a lake and some little buildings and a small obelisk, the list goes on. Also i read somewhere that the beatles shot one of their music videos there (can't remember which one!). I used to come here a lot when i was little and we'd play hide and seek and sit on the stone lions (which we had to do again, for old times sake).

monoprinting

this is a monoprint i did, which as it developed, seemed to create a life of its own. It was taken from a photograph i took whilst on a trip to Florence in  Italy. I started to work into it with brown ink, to link it up and give each shape and shadow definition. i really like the mix of brown-on-blue, which i think gives it a slightly more antique look..i don't know why!

sunny weekend

a little trip to buckingham palace made me remember just how amazing the achictecture of london is, and imagine just how crazy it would have been, with thousands of other people, crowded in the mall on the day of the royal wedding.

Amorphous Skull

Since september, ive been working on my art project which was based on an essay i wrote about the influences of Australian art in the 20th century. This however, divulged into a progect that started with photographs of kangaroo skulls, which i looked at in many different medias.

these etchings were some of my favourite pieces but were VERY time consuming! With each one i used mono printing on top to create different effects and play with the contrasts.



after this i experimented with many different skulls in different painting and printing techniques, using what worked well in each one and further refining it to help me with the choice of what to do for my final piece.

this is a print i did using a thick piece of an old billboard which had a rough plasticy texture to it. i etched into it using a much more free and sketchy technique than that of the tooth etchings. i also wiped away some areas with white spirit it create different light and dark in the piece.

 For my final piece, i decided to use a printing method. i compiled many different photos of skulls which i took at the UCL museum of zoology (just off Gower Street) in order to create my own skulls, which to mee looks like a mythical dragon/dinosaur skull.

my favourite print of one half ot the skull

it was really interesting seeing all the different colours from previous prints come through

the inked up printing plate which i made from carpet tiles...the effect is a bit like lino