Uncategorized – Page 4

Hand and Eye

May 15, 2017 berrydainesLeave a comment

Eye for Drawing Thread

Lincoln

March 6, 2017March 6, 2017 berrydaines1 Comment

I’m sure I once made a linocut of the view along Park Street, with Sanctuary records on the left and Ruddocks ahead. It’s filed somewhere safe…?

Ruddocks is an art materials shop, book shop, stationers (etc) and the place where you would always meet one or more friends. We used to ogle pastels, paints and inks before buying materials to make our school and college homework.

In recent years they’ve hosted art classes, including life drawing sessions with Roy Ridsdale. His classes were the only useful part of my foundation year at Lincoln College of Art. Life drawing is often dismissed as a waste of time. It isn’t, unless you’re in a badly lit room with an uninspiring tutor. I’ve seen videos of some life classes that look similar to watching Sid Vicious teach guitar lessons. Anyone would be bored in a class led by someone waffling about something they don’t understand… but maybe drawing can’t be taught. Learn by doing.

Ruddocks is closing soon, after 145 years. I bought all of my favourite pens there in the 1970s & 80s, also some very useful craft tools during my last visit (5 years ago!). There’s a whole essay to be written about the loss of creativity and crafts in schools, while C21st life is being dumbed down.

Anyway, this linocut, of a view further down the High Street, was made in 1979. There’s a clue at the bottom corner:

Street Art

February 25, 2017February 25, 2017 berrydainesLeave a comment

Yesterday, while leaving the house, I encountered some people who were keen to know if I believed the universe had been designed. They seemed friendly. My thoughts about everything and everyone being accidental probably weren’t the correct response.

Not that this orange cone landed accidentally. Or did it?

Art is everywhere, if you look.

Romance

February 13, 2017February 13, 2017 berrydainesLeave a comment

I like these ghostly figures in their pale scenery. Fleeting moments…

Yule

December 8, 2016December 13, 2016 berrydaines3 Comments

It’s easier to ink up in two colours than to cut separate blocks, I thought…

Next I cut the shapes, leaving a little bit to peg them up by

Printing the backs. A piece of baking paper is useful if some of the first side isn’t fully dry.

Paper robins displayed in a window. — Update: Paper robins flying in a rainy window.

Yr Atom

December 4, 2016September 9, 2018 berrydainesLeave a comment

In December 2016, the Welsh Art Therapists group got together for a day out in Carmarthen. They booked a room to make some lino prints at Yr Atom, a Welsh cultural centre which is based at the site of the Carmarthen Journal.

Printing in a newspaper office should be easy, you’d think. Unfortunately the room has been set out for vocal meetings, not for art making. We got around the lack of sink by putting some bowls of water ready for cleaning lino and rollers.

A nice quiet hour of transferring drawings to lino then cutting.

Then some printing. Was that Art Therapy? No.

Sharpening up…

November 25, 2016August 30, 2017 berrydainesLeave a comment

First, a drawing, which is traced then transferred (using a very hard pencil, draw over the lines to press carbon paper marks) in reverse onto a piece of lino.