Some Like it Hot

Well, now it is HOT!

I am sitting in a pool of sweat – unfortunately not a swimming pool!

I am simply melting, but refuse to be put off. It is still a novelty and after the years and years of incessant rain and cold winds and storms that I have put down in recent times this is definitely preferable.

Let me count the upsides of too much heat:

1. It is dead easy to drink your required eight glasses of water a day!
2. You hardly ever have to go to the toilet for a wee.
3. Like a sauna, it really cleans all the ingrained dirt out of your pores, but there is no snow to roll in after the sauna. Actually the sauna does not end!
4. You don’t have to wear many clothes which saves on washing.
5. You don’t have to wear sunblock because it is too hot to go out
6. But you do manage to keep a nice little brown glow going by very short exposures – to the line and back is sufficient.
7. On that subject – clothes dry really quickly
8. You don’t need to put on the central heating in the evenings or fill a hotwater bottle on your way to bed.
9. You can’t tell when you have a hot flash – because you seem to have one that lasts all day and all night and everybody else is having them too. All of Spain is menopausing!
10. If you forget to close the window before leaving the house for the day you don’t have to worry about the rain blowing in all over all your bits on the windowsill.
11. You never have to take a jacket or a wrap on a late night out, although mosquito repellant is advisable
12. No jumpers
13. No overcoats
14. You can work slowly and no one complains
15. The weeds do not bother to grow so there is no weeding to be done
16. Mind you as we have discovered that our garden is just one great big rock I do not think that weeding is going to be a huge problem over the years – a huge Zen garden springs to mind! So just a bit of gentle raking when I am in the mood
17. You can admit to taking a snooze in the afternoon and you don’t have to call it a power nap anymore.
18. Will I continue?
19. Or are you getting the picture
20. When I finally get my wonderful terrace built out the back of the house I will be able to spend the summer time slopping about making fantastic clay sculptures and not worry about getting covered in water and wet clay – it will be an image from Woodstock or Reading Festival, but perhaps a bit more creative.

I do think I have earned this right to be enjoying my life here – obviously it is not perfect as I have been at pains to point out in previous postings, but as a life choice this has to count as one of my better ones. In fact I am not sure that I actually made any real choices before this one – they sort of happened in a much more organic way and I was reactive rather than proactive. Mind you this one I could probably have thought through a bit more first, but hey! That would go against a whole lifetime of shooting from the hip and being led by my heart.

And both those things have served me pretty well so far.

Leaves

Hello,

I wanted to post a bit earlier today but was running low on good images in JPEG format to upload here - and without a picture to get the mind wandering I just wouldn't know where else to begin.

This is a drypoint print. It was taken from a simple study of curling leaves but the technique (in my opinion) has enhanced the delicate line image and turned it into something new.

I love prints, from the humble linocut right through to my favourite - the Mezzotint! Mmmmmm! I love Mezzotint

That said - drypoint is pretty cool too.

A drypoint print is an Intaglio print.

What that means is it is a print that is printed from the groove of a plate as opposed to a Relief print, such as a woodblock print - A woodblock print is printed from the area that is left after cutting out. Do I make sense? Well let me try to simplify it.

An Intaglio print lends itself perfectly to line drawing - and usually very fine line drawing at that, because you are not drawing with a pen, but something much finer, like a knife or a scriber of some description. You need to cut a line into the 'plate' and the print is taken from that line.

When you are doing a woodcut or linocut you print from the area that is left behind after cutting out. So you not only have to think in reverse (that is usually the way with a print - except for silkscreen and digital - but that is another kettle of fish altogether) but you also have to think in reverse black and white - unless you are doing a multi colour linocut/woodblock print and that really is another blog altogether - so I am not going to even go there right now. Think black and white! So with a linocut/woodblock print you have to cut out the areas that you wish to remain white - this form of printing lends itself better to larger areas of black and white, they are usually much bolder. Great for Chiaroscuro (look that up if you don't know)

But really the best way to understand print is to actually do it - it is almost impossible to explain it by mouth. So you need to contact me and start booking in for my print classes next summer! I am not sure what I will be offering right now, but most probably, drypoint, linocut and collograph (I am not even going to go into explanation of that one right now). Those are all simple kitchen table methods of printing, which will be necessary because I will not be set up with a printing press by that time. The results though can be far from the kitchen table, but that, of course, is up to you!