I became secretary of the Kirkstall Art Trail committee at the end of last year. Since then we have been planning furiously, ready to make an Art Trail worth shouting about.
I was tasked with creating a new website. And after a week of researching and writing and tweaking the website it’s ready to view.
Take a look here: Kirkstall Art Trail
I like the simplicity of this drawing, and the metallic pens. This one will be water? Or maybe every cloud has its silver lining, every fish has its gold? I am going to create more with similar aesthetics.
I started this drawing in May. I’d been unable to finish until now.
After the weekend of Kirkstall Art Trail (15-16 July), I was full of positivity. I’d seen many different people, as they were welcomed into my home – which I had set up as a makeshift gallery, and they liked my art, they even bought my art (as cards, postcards, books and prints)! I had only got back into drawing last year, after decades focusing on photography, so asides posting on Instagram and showing to my friends, I hadn’t displayed my drawings for the wider public to see and comment upon.
I thought I would try and sell a few cards and prints, thinking ‘you never know, I may sell a couple of postcards’, but I had no clue what drawings to get printed up, going in completely blind. I sold almost all my stock (over 100 items), and this genuinely blew me away. The comments I received from visitors appeared to point towards my Yorkshire scenes where I have used pattern to create the landscapes as being more popular than more the ones without. This feedback and critique has helped me to look at the bare bones of this drawing again and I finished is using pattern.
Thanks to Kirkstall Art Trail for organising the trail, it’s given me a huge confidence boost.
[As an aside, I should also note that my Google search for images of the Yorkshire Countryside, has given me an image of Troutbeck Valley in the Lake District, this will be another one that has crept in over the borders, in my series.]
The greetings cards, postcards and prints I sold during the trail. I got the cards and A4 print made at printed.com (who I highly recommend, great products and they have great customer service), and the postcards printed at moo.com (I have created postcards with moo before, and you can select a quantity and then as many designs as you like – within that quantity – which worked well with the selection I had made). I sold almost all the cards and postcards, and one of the prints, I also had two bug books that I had purchased from the mobile app company ‘FreePrints Photobooks‘, I wasn’t sure that these would sell, but my insect artwork and researched facts about beetles and bugs went down so well, I sold both! I’d like to see where I can get the bug book made more inexpensively so I can reduce the price in future.
I’ve had pieces of Lino (SoftCut) and all the paraphernalia that goes with it for more than a year now (probably two if I’m honest), so far I have cut and printed some leaves, and designed a Christmas card which I sent out to friends and family in December 2022. The leaves were incredibly simple, but you have to start somewhere, and the Christmas card was inspired by designs I’d seen on the internet so I don’t feel like I 100% own my design.
My next attempt was inspired by a Molotow drawing I had done of some stylised peonies in a blue vase.
The first thing I did was to change the drawing in Photoshop to a basic black and white template.
The next thing was to transfer it to my Lino block. I ended up simplifying the drawing, as I don’t feel confident yet to do something complicated. I wanted to print in three colours, similar to the original drawing, but I hadn’t thought it through properly – I do not have tiny brayers (paint rollers) to do the individual parts, so that’s something to think about in future, for example, separating the pieces of Lino, painting individual colour layers. It’s all a learning curve. I ended up using a paintbrush to add paint to the flowers and leaves, and used a brayer for the vase, the paint wasn’t as evenly applied but I quite like the imperfect effect. Here is the result.
I completed this drawing at the end of 2022, but wasn’t sold by the shadowing I had done on the road and house. I decided when I was cleaning up the image in photoshop (removing dust and dog hairs that had strayed onto the drawing and revealed in scanning) to remove the pen stippling on the road and houses – a painstakingly long process to try and retain the original drawings colours and marks. After this I copied the drawing across the ProCreate on my iPad and added some shading digitally. I have seen other illustrators mix mediums from drawing on paper to digital drawing on ProCreate, so it is something I will think about the next time I am creating a Yorkshire landscape.
