paintings prints and stuff

January Snow. Vivien Blackburn A painting that started out as a monoprint demo and ended as a mixed media piece. About 10/11 inches tall. The monoprint was done using oil paint on acetate, printed onto paper wet with turps. I then worked into it with a colour shaper and a brush, using more oil paint and then a graphite stick to draw through the wet paint. The graphite stick worked beautifully on the turpsy surface, gliding across it and making intense oily marks.

Experimenting with those lino prints: Winter Light, Vivien Blackburn, lino and coloured pencil A lino print on left hand page of sketchbook, printed onto tissue paper and then worked on with Polychromos pencils and continued across the double page spread. Trying to catch a cold winter light - the kind that bleaches the colour out of the landscape. Moonrise, Vivien Blackburn, linoprint and coloured pencil, Vivien Blackburn This one was printed onto tracing paper and I then worked on the back of it with Polychromos pencils and again, continued the image onto the facing page. This one makes me think of the mood in Samuel Palmer paintings - does it for you? I've put some of the lino prints on my Etsy shop if anyone is interested - here

Ros, June 08, sketching along the canal at Aylestone. conte pencil. Vivien Blackburn On Monday I went sketching along the canal at Aylestone with Ros - sketch of her above, working hard. It was lovely to be out and a friendly little robin shared our lunches and spent the afternoon virtually on our feet and perched on the bench I was sitting on :>) .... and of course I didn't have my camera. It was a lovely warm, still afternoon and everything was lush and green. Along the bank in front of us the seed heads on the grasses were a pinky mauve colour and there were white clover flowers. We were near a lock and boats occasionally arrived to tie up while they operated the lock gates and went on their way and occasional walkers passed by. The robin stayed throughout :>) The canal at Aylestone, the curves and ridges of medieval strip farming are still visible in the field on the other side. Plein air Pencil sketch. Vivien Blackburn This was the first sketch I did us...

copyright Vivien Blackburn Katherine asked me to show how I frame work, so .... here goes :) This is how I framed the big mixed media and pastel abstracted flower. The frame is over 3ft square and the mount was either 4 or 5 inches wide - I think it might have been 5 with 5.5 inches at the bottom. It could even have had a wider mount (mat) - but the framing costs got a bit much! My framer taught me when I was starting out that it pays to have an extra half inch at the bottom to stop the 'falling out of the frame' look that you can get if the mount is equal all the way round. I don't use coloured mounts, just antique white - a soft creamy colour. I usually frame in limed ash - again a pale neutral colour that lets the painting be the key element. By using one type of wood they all look right together in a show. The widths of the frame may vary but the 'look' is the same. I never frame work on canvas. I use gallery wrap canvas and paint the edges - usually in a colo...

I looked at some possible compositions for aerial views, particularly of Aylestone with the ancient packhorse bridge, Victorian canal bridges and footbridges, paths, tracks and roads making patterns across the landscape. It will be a while before I start any finished paintings from them as I want to do more sketching and finished paintings plein air before I start this. It will be more abstracted, playing a little with perspective and I need more knowledge of what is happening at ground level - the colours and textures and contours and details - before I start a large canvas from these. Most of these are in mechanical pencil but the one below is a mixture of oil pastel and coloured pencil - It was going to be watercolour over the oil pastels scribbles but then I decided to experiment with coloured pencil along with them. I quite like this composition with its 5 bridges packed into such a small area and criss crossing of paths and tracks. There are interlocking arrow shapes and Z shape...

The 15C packhorse bridge across a small river and flood plain. Charcoal. I'm sure I'm suffering from hypothermia! I'm still chilled inside and it's now 1am. I'm off to bed in a minute - husband went hours ago so it should be nice and warm as toast. Ros and I went sketching by the packhorse bridge this afternoon, both of us wrapped up well but oh it was Cold . I got absolutely chilled to the bone and after a couple of hourse we gave up and went off for a hot chocolate and a warm by the fire in a lovely little tea shop. We both got 2 sketches done first though so our haloes shone :) The first one above was in charcoal, I sat uncomfortably balanced on a thick tree branch above some mud and water trying not to drop the sketchbook in it ..... or me. The second was of the old iron railway bridge across the canal - the river that flows under the packhorse bridge joins it on the left. The old railway track is now a footpath that goes for several miles across the city. Mech...

I have just discovered http://maps.live.com - it's amazing! the 3D views are much better than they look here in reality but I had to take photos of the screen as it isn't possible (as far as I can see) to save them or link to them. They show the canal, the River Byam coming in to join it, the canal bridge, modern footbridge carrying the path that goes for miles alongside the river/canal and the old packhorse bridge stretching out across the fields. This microsoft site is much better than the google version and if you live in an area (I do) where you can zoom in on your house - well Big Brother really is watching you! You can see garden tables and patios, the ivy up the end wall and wall in the front garden - the back of my house is rather hidden by trees - the detail is fantastic and you can look from the north, south, east and west. I don't know it this will work but I found out where to link :) this should link to the aerial view of frog island, where the charcoal sket...

Yesterday I did a couple of really quick sketches of the old Packhorse Bridge at Aylestone. It dates from at least the 1400's, possibly earlier. It's a long stone bridge, originally 200 metres but only 50 remain, with 11 arches, some slightly pointed and gothic looking and 'cutwaters' - buttresses that stand out like the prows of boats that presumable 'cut' the water and relieved the pressure on the stonework in floods. It's about one cart width with little refuges over the cutwaters to allow pedestrians to move out of the way of oncoming carts. aside: look at this very funny blog to see an interesting story sort of related to this :>) http://idlethoughtsofanidlewoman.blogspot.com/2007/03/le-derriere-du-cheval.html In the past, marshland was a bigger danger and obstacle to travel than rivers - rivers often have a place where they can be forded safely or bridges can be built. Marshland stretches over larger areas and is impassable. 50 metres of the bridge...

A sketch of Frog island, a grotty inner city industrial area, in watercolour and coloured pencil in the 11 inch square sketchbook. I really like to mix media, it gives me different marks and possibilities to draw on to push darks or emphasise lights. The tree is enhanced with a Lyra flourescent yellow pencil - the leaves were that incredibly bright and fresh spring green against the murky darkness of the old brick wall behind it. Behind the weir the water was inky dark and appeared still, although of course it wasn't. In front there was bright light reflecting and a jumble of ever changing (as the light changed) reflections. English weather isn't the easiest for sketching in! sometimes the light on the water reflected the bricks of the buildings clearly and at other it went dark with only hints of a reflection as clouds went over the sun. At one point the friend I was sketching with stood helpfully in front of the scene :>) I was drawing

a couple of close ups of yesterdays sketch - as it's a larger drawing it's hard to see the details.

photograph of sketchbook: I spent the afternoon sketching along the canal in an area called Frog Island with a friend. The other side of the weir is the canal and boats passed occasionally, this side is the River Soar and to the left is one end of Frog Island. With all the industry I somehow doubt that there are any frogs now - though there were 2 swans nests just below and moorhens scuttling about on the water and amorous pigeons strutting and cooing near my feet, so still plenty of wildlife. It's an old industrial area of Victorian factories and in the distance are cranes, they are extending one of the shopping malls in the town centre. This sketch has christened my nice big A3 landscape book ~:>) - it's about 3 feet across a double page spread so is nice to use with charcoal. I hadn't sketched out in charcoal for a long time and I really enjoyed it, I'll definitely be doing more. I really do like charcoal - it's such a painterly medium. In this I used willow ...

(slide show - if you subscribe you'll probably just see a little icon that says get your own !) I didn't have time to sketch today but I did manage to get out with my camera to a nice spot on the edge of the city at Aylestone. You go under an old bridge carryng a disused railway line to a little car park overlooking ancient willows. A Victorian bridge takes you to the other side of the canal and looks onto the water meadows surrounding the River Biam, a tiny river, crossed by a 15th Century packhorse bridge. It's popular with walkers because you can walk for miles along the canal towpath with occasional side trips like this and you can walk or cycle into the country to the south or through the city and out the other side to the north alongside the river or canal. Marsh land was the biggest barrier to travel and trade in ancient times - rivers could be navigated or forded or crossed by bridge, but marshes were treacherous and changeable and a major problem. The website says:...

Today I went back to Union Wharf to look again at the tangle of boats, shining water and expensive loft apartments. This is a photograph of the sketchbook - the scanner (image below) didn't pick up quite all of the image but shows the colour, composition and marks better. The book was too small (11 inches square) to fit in the whole of the tangle of boats - there were lots just below that lamp that I couldn't fit in. I need to go back with more time and a larger sketchbook. There was a colder wind blowing today but I was sheltered from it and it was positively hot in the sun. I had thought it would be a nice place to live but after sitting there on a weekday with a car alarm going off, another car parking with a loud radio playing and children passing on a walk with their parents from time to time and shouting to each other ..... maybe not . At weekends I bet it can be pretty noisy. I like peace. I'd like to get out into the countryside now and look at the river with the fr...

I looked this out in an old sketchbook as it fits with the current series. It was done in 1995 with a Rotring pen. I don't use pen and ink very often as I find it too scratchy for me - I like pencil or charcoal better as I can get areas of tone down in a way I like better, I usually used water with these Rotring pen sketches to create washes, but only used a very little on this one. I really like other peoples pen sketches but just don't enjoy doing them myself as much as other media. I want to go back here and sketch again. It's on the canal in the city. The old factory buildings and higgledy piggledy roofs and building shapes probably won't be there much longer as the area is being redeveloped. Such a shame - I expect it will be more ticky tacky boxes, looking as though they were made from lego :( ...... and all the same.

The boat looked a bit chopped off so I added a bit more to the length - as I go along I may do some long thin horizontal images, this marina cries out for that treatment.

After teaching this morning I decided to make a start on my project and do some sketching at this marina on the canal. It's only a couple of miles from where I teach. These were done in an 11 inch square sketchbook, the first with the Lyra skintones set of coloured pencils and the second started off to be a pen and ink sketch with a Rotring pen - but I wanted colour, so I finished it with coloured pencils. I was there for a couple of hours and it was lovely to sit in the sunshine and enjoy the warmth. A lovely friendly lady brought me a leaflet on the history of the marina. It was a originally a wharf of warehouses for goods brought in by the narrowboats, then a woodyard, then a marina for a boat hire firm and finally they've revamped the warehouse and made them into these des res apartments. The marina was buzzing with owners working on their boats - a few chatted to me, others left me alone. The nearby Grand Union Canal goes all the way to London and this canal was built to c...

Swithland Woods , oil on paper, plein air painting, one of the woods and trees series. I tend to work in series. I like to look at places through the seasons, seeing the changing light and weather; the gorgeous dark skies of autumn with flashes of golden light, the cool fresh bright light of spring or the cool grey light of winter with its skeletal trees - summer isn't always as interesting somehow. When the sky is blue and the trees are dense with foliage the landscape isn't quite as interesting, very green green green, though working at the coast when it's warm is a very pleasant thing to do! Ongoing series are about the coast from Old Hunstanton to Wells next the Sea in Norfolk, local woods and landscape and Flowers-up-close-and-personal. I've decided to start another project as well, also on the local area, and asked 3 friends, Ros, Glen and Maggie, to join with me. We'll work plein air - sometimes all 4 of us - other times alone or whoever can make it that day....