Disposable printing

This week I have been teaching recycled relief printing, normally for this, I use polystyrene trays from under pizza's. This time, I tried using the foiled lids of takeaway containers. As with the polystyrene trays you draw into the foiled surface using a biro, indenting the surface. Th results were very good, it is a quick easy technique and when the printing ink is even they are almost like etchings. 

Printing with Nail Varnish

I wanted to achieve the effect of bubbles or rainbow clouds in an illustration last week so I returned to a technique that I used to teach, which is using nail varnish to marble or print the paper.

You will need:
An old plastic container
water
nail varnish (various colours)
paper cut to size.

Fill your plastic container two thirds full of water the size of this container dictates the size of work you will make.
Then have as many nail varnish colours as you can. I would advocate trying to get your friends to donate their old or unwanted nail varnishes. carefully pour onto the water surface nail varnish. I like it when it spreads like the blue and yellow in the picture above, you can blow the surface to try to spread it, but it depends on the consistency of the varnish.

You can then drop the paper onto the surface to print the varnish, or push it down through the water surface, these two techniques produce different results. I tried using nail varnish remover to make the varnish more fluid but it didn't help. It is bright and fun and the results are very good to use for collage. The down side is that it is pretty toxic and the whole container and watery contents just goes into the bin at the end.

There are ways and means . . .

What can you do when a friend is very ill in hospital and you cannot take flowers?
Flowers have been banned in British hospitals for some time now and it is difficult to know what to take when you are visiting or even to send when you aren't able to visit.

One of my students had asked a week or so ago if, just for fun, we could do some of the aerial photos like those of Jan Van Holleben (see below).

In trying to solve the problem of how to send  flowers, this was an ideal solution, draw the flowers and put ourselves amongst them to send our love.

We worked hard, laughed lots and send our love and flowers to Agata  . . . Get well soon XXX

Getting animated

It is coming to the end of the academic year and I am going to be sad to say goodbye to everyone as they go off and continue their studies elsewhere.
As a goodbye project it was decided that we would make an animation. We thought that sea creatures would be most appropriate as we have had a marine themed painting project, here are some of the results.
Now for many hours of editing to put it all together and add the terrible noise/singing we produced as the sound track.

Images from the top: Leslieann Tibbert, Natasha Younes, Colin Cameron, Lee Hutton, Tiffani Ferrier, Leslieann Tibbert, Andy Crichton, and animating Leslieann Tibbert and Ayesha Montador.

Comic Relief Day is Today!

After 3 weeks of making album covers often late into the night, today is comic relief day. I have to say it has been three weeks of some of the best laughter and fun We have cried many tears of laughter photographing and making these Album covers thank you to all the students involved, You're Great!
Please help us reach our target.  Thank you.

Some album covers

Making your face funny for money . . . Comic Relief 2015.

My students and I have been making and are continuing to make terrible albums, album covers that would make me laugh or scream in a charity shop. These are going to be in an online charity event on facebook where people can vote for their favourite cover by liking it and sponsor us for comic relief.  The event will end on March 13th.  
The covers are created using wigs, hats and nonsense with an occasional instrument and a lot of laughter and hopefully will raise funds for a good cause.

Exciting!

Exciting times. A brief display at Kirkcaldy railway station followed by the installation of 11 of the 50 'through the glass' portraits that all three streams of my students have been working on for the past 5 weeks at the forecourt of Kirkcaldy Museum and Gallery. 

It was so wonderful to see the pictures out, being shared and getting great reactions. 

Tonight is the Diane Arbus opening at Kirkcaldy Museum and Galleries and I can't wait to see our lovely students sharing their work and enjoying the Diane Arbus exhibition with friends and family. 

Fun at work

Sometimes I love my job so much! Yesterday was one of those days.

Inspired by Rolf Harder(1929-2013), When Alcohol Distorts Reality, Poster, 1963. (above) I set a new task, of a self portrait through glass. To help my students I took photographs of them through a variety of glass objects. The resulting photos sometimes made us cry with laughter, sometimes want to run with fear. It was the best hall of mirrors ever. I am really looking forward to seeing the work that they produce.

A bus stop away from Christmas

Yesterday one group of students escaped with their heads, here they all are on a double decker bus. 
Today there is the prospect of a scary Karaoke  . . . anyone would think it is almost Christmas.

Result of Donald Baechler inspired classes

 

A month ago I featured work by Donald Baechler . 
Sometimes when I put artist/illustrators on 'theartroom' I then go to the real art room and share it with my students as inspiration. 

These students have drawn the art room plants and drawn profiles to interpret in the style of Donald Baechler. 
Once drawn they were cut out of cardboard. We then used newsprint that I mixed with hot water and blended to a pulp, to apply to the card. The newsprint pulp is quite strong and when it drys it looks like egg boxes. you can apply it to chicken wire for bigger shapes/ sculptures.
It is a very wet process but after a week they are dry and you can paint them. We incorporated narrow strips of wood and then stood the sculptures up by embedding them into wooden bases.

Birds

 

I am making brids with my students at the moment and flocks of them are gathering, I am expecting more to arrive today.

Where did the haggis go?

To tell you the story of what happened to my students haggis.
He was arrested by the transport police in Inverness! But then released on bail by a restaurateur from 'The Joy of Taste' to be the guest of honour at a Burns supper. I am so proud that he made it to Inverness and was addressed so warmly.

Haggis on a train to Inverness

Below: Waiting at Kirkcaldy train station, above on the Inverness train.

Today is Burns day in Scotland. I have been making Haggis for weeks with my students, tiny ones, tartan ones and this giant 6ft, kilted and dashing Haggis. Today he left us to travel north with a label.

I am hoping that people on the train will take their pictures with him and possibly make him guest of honour at their burns supper . . . I hope he doesn't get lost on the way!

Bottles of art

The image below is by Lucus Blalock and it inspired me to think of making some 'bottles of art' with my students. Unbelievably this was really exciting, it opened up so many possibilities, firstly you could produce art on translucent, semi translucent and opaque surfaces, with an endless variety of mediums. How you place the art in a bottle also offers up many different solutions and effects. Indeed you could have ten or twenty pictures of the same image and whether you crumpled it, sliced it rolled it etc would completely change its appearance. Viewing the art you could look at it, through it and hold it up to the light.