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I had a Little Beetle

I hope the new look blog is behaving itself ... please let me know if its not!  I think you can now subscribe to get email reminders again - I seemed to have lost that button before and hopefully it doesn't jump about as you read it!

I've been colouring in.  This beetle is from a photograph I took in the Natural history Museum.  I used the photograph, cropped it, enlarged it and then using Photoshop I digitized it until it was just the bare 'bones' leaving me a lovely image to play with.
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Its been a quieter week at college - I have been consolidating my work and reflecting on what I have got and where to go next.   I have complied a large file of resource inspiration, some of it primary photographs, collated artists that inspire me and some market research about my potential target audience.  this file is a work in progress as I add to it all the time as inspiration hits me but a lot of it is made up of photographs from my travels and gallery visits over the last two years.

I went to an external life drawing class held in the art gallery in Hartlepool.  it was an interesting experience and I was able to build on the lessons I had had in college.  The model presented some quite difficult poses, the linear standing and lying ones were not so bad but the crouched and squatting ones were really hard to capture!

I also did some mono printing, using black ink on paper.  I seem this time, to have got the ink right, not too overdone and I was experimenting with texture, rolling, flattening and pressing items on the paper as well as drawing.  Very mixed results but some good texture and mark making.   I foiled some them but my foil glue was a bit past it some it was a bit hit and miss.


I got a tad bored with the monochrome work I've been doing - working with printing ink  and charcoal is very pleasant but I have felt in need of a colour fix.  Hence the beetle!

I coloured a photocopy of a jackdaw I had drawn from one of my own photographs in, using promarker pens.  I then cut it up into four pieces and included a feather for a fifth piece.   Then using one of the textured mono print pieces which I had made by pressing a basket on the paper and then added some foil. I cut it up into 8 similar sized rectangles and used them as a base to collage the jackdaw on.  These eight piece were then arranged a mismatched grid formation in my ever growing sketch book to make a king jackdaw jigsaw... I felt the jackdaw was very regal so I added a crown!





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