Drawing again into wax on a metal plate

I have not made an etching for years. Almost two years ago now I bought a few zinc plates and coated them with hard ground and did a few below average doodles at home but never bothered to get them etched and left them. Recently I've been concentrating on pretty much just one project, a new book, and felt that sometimes I really needed to get away from it (before my head exploded !) and have a rest by doing something completely different, so I started to have another go at those etching plates. They're only quite small, about 6 x 9 cms and I usually work on them through an illuminated enlarging lens.



Using just a dressmaking pin, masking taped to an old pencil, the line you draw is incredibly thin, the minuteness of it all is enticing and you can get quite lost in it's intricacy !



Writing has to be made back to front, something I'm not bad at except S's !



Now for the technical bit ! After you have made your drawing the plate is ready to go into the acid bath to be etched, but prior to this you can paint any parts you don't want etched with a stop out varnish solution. I don't tend to do a lot of this, I see the drawing as a whole live performance with none of the mistakes edited out.



The acid eats into the plate only in the parts where you have made your drawing, where you have scraped away the waxy coating and exposed the metal itself.



The wax coating is removed and the plate is ready for printing but that's another story !


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Location:King's Rd,London,United Kingdom

The wonderful micro world of mark

Yesterday I went to the small Cotswold town of Burford to see an exhibition of paintings by Mark Rowney.



He creates beautiful little worlds of wonder for us to delight in!



The window in front of his little work desk looks out across a vast panoramic hillscape known as Weardale in County Durham, this gentle artist knows the names and ways of all the plants and birds and creatures and loves them all, he's a bit like an acrylic paint bearing St Francis !



He's showing at the Brian Sinfield Gallery for the next few weeks.

Location:St Barnabas St,London,United Kingdom

Five oh !

I can't think of a lot of cool things to say in favour of turning fifty (as I did myself last week)....except getting a beautiful one off portrait necklace from jewellery supremos Tatty Devine !

Thank you so much Rosie and Harriet !!!!!

Location:Ebury Square,London,United Kingdom

Laura Carlin

Like her namesake in the movie 'Scum', Carlin truly is the daddy ! Well the daddy of beautifully painted hand made ceramics !!! I knew of her beautiful drawings for quite a while before I met her when I was dishing out top prize for best illustrated book at the V and A illustration awards for her really, no, incredibly good version of Ted Hughes' classic 'The Iron Man' (do please check it out!).

Anyway this morning started a weekend long show of new ceramic pieces at 54 Rivington St in Shorditch.





What can I say? The woman is a genius and actually I got quite emotional at the sheer creative outburst if it all !

Below: Naughty girl



I wouldn't mind but she's clever and hilarious to boot ! Recently I had to follow her on stage to talk about my work at a symposium on the role of sentimentality in illustration (yes ! You heard right !!!) held at Somerset House, obviously she had bewitched the entire audience and I only just about stumbled through my talk by referring to her every 20 seconds !


How great is this lion !



"Who's the Daddy ??!!!"

Location:Pimlico Rd,London,United Kingdom

Ebury park day for night

Outside our bedroom window there is a small square public park, on the opposing side of it there has sprung up a large building site which is floodlit around the clock dramatically backlighting the trees which at night are usually shadowed in darkness, a beautiful effect that we never see except perhaps when it has snowed !

Location:Pimlico Rd,London,United Kingdom

Every Saturday morning I buy eggs from the farmers Market down our rd, the Belgravia farmers Market, (the subject of which deserves a much bigger post all of it's own !), today's batch were particularly wide ranging in tone and color.

Location:Pimlico Rd,London,United Kingdom