First, I have been hard at work on a commission. I don’t do these very often, partly because people usually only ask me for a commission if they want to be depicted as a fairy or demon or some such (for a few commissioned ‘portraits’ in the past have a look at: http://www.nancyfarmer.net/gal_commissions.html ), and also commissions worry me in principle: what if the people don’t like the end result!? That said, I have never had anyone who said they didn’t like the end result, and all of the commissions I have ‘got into’ once I was stated. but all the same, it’s worrying!…

So the brief was… ‘a fairy or fairies on a motorbike’ …possibly as a self portrait to boot. Intriguing. I liked this idea (though secretly I dread painting mechanical objects – they are so unforgiving if you get it wrong), To be honest, I don’t think the end result is really anything like a self-portrait, other than the fact (which I accept), that a large number of my characters resemble me. I used to think this was a problem until a fellow artist pointed out that this is very common amongst artists who paint from their imagination. Since when I have come to see that this is absolutely true, and on a couple of occasions have not been at all surprised, being already familiar with an artist’s work, to find, on meeting said artist, that they look exactly like I would have expected…

Anyway, enough rambling, here were the results – the initial drawing transferred to watercolour paper (not great lighting, I have to say, but it was dark outside).

So, this was my third attempt: a ringleted lady wearing what I now discover is not unlike the mask of a Medieval Plague Doctor, albeit a rather insubstantial version of the proper design…

Here is my original sketch (centre) and the ‘raw’ plate (right) with the design transferred onto it from tracing paper (left):

pre-rocked mezzotint plate and sketch

After some trial and error the first time I tried to trace an image onto a plate, I found that it is just about possible, if you use a lot of graphite pencil on the back of the tracing paper and press through fairly firmly with a biro. The trick is not to damage the plate by pressing too hard, of course!

So, I already explained some of the technique in previous posts, but here’s a little snap of the burnished plate (not finished, as it turned out):

Burnished mezzotint plate

And the finished print:

Mezzotint engraving: 'Bird mask and Ringlets' by Nancy Farmer

This one is printing quite nicely now, having had, as with the others, to go back to my burnishing tools and work over more or less the whole image twice because it was printing too dark. This seems to be the one issue with mezzotint printing: how to get the very light tones light enough, while retaining enough black ink so as to preserve that lovely softness that I am liking so much. Here’s the next one that I’m still working on:

print from an unfinished plate: 'Curly horns and Ruff'

This is what I mean about it being difficult to get nice light tones – if I take off too much ink before printing (on the right) I get light tones, but I lose the softness of the print on the left and it becomes a much harsher image… back to the workbench for more work on this plate.

Anyway, I have a total of five plates this size, so one more to go, and I’ll have some of them available to see – and to buy – at our Spring Farm Arts open weekend 11th – 12th February in about a fortnight’s time – come and visit if you are in the area, I shall as usual be exhibiting my work and ready to talk to anyone and everyone, in the Cider Barn Gallery.

And one last thing – in case you missed it on both my website and Facebook page… I submitted my ‘Fornicating Fairies’ pictures to the very lovely and up-market Art Erotica exhibition at the Cork Street Gallery, which has been running this week. Not only did the two largest drawings get hung, ‘Fornicating Fairies’ was also awarded the grand prize of the exhibition, about which I am still not only delighted but completely stunned! Here’s me last night at the Artist’s Reception, in front of the drawings which are rather more to the point than the merely risqué of some of my artwork:

Nancy Farmer at Art Erotica with the 'Fornicating Fairies'

Sometime, I think I shall have to add these to my ‘proper’ website and find some way of warning people about their content! In the meantime, they exist in a little backwater called www.fornicatingfairies.co.uk

Euphorbia Lathyris, or Caper Spurge - the innocent but interesting leafy thing I found in my veg bed

So, there are these plants: Euphorbias, also known as Spurges, a vast genus of plants, wildly varying, including some very common weeds and some rather nice garden plants, in an understated kind of way. They usually don’t go in for flashy, these plants, not generally having much in the way of what one might call flowers, instead they tend to have stately bracts: modified leaves that are at the back of the flower and from out of the middle of which the insignificant flower and subsequent seed pod grow, plus, certainly in this case, another two more stems which grow each into two more bracts etc, until it eventually runs out of steam…

Euphorbia Lathyris - the monster it grew into...!

Anyway, all the Euphorbias have this in common: they all have harmful sap. Toxic, yes, but also very irritating to skin and appalling stuff to get into your eyes.  I found this out this largely because I rescued a small and curious plant from my vegetable patch – transferring it to a spare bit of flower bed before the veg bed was dug over last spring, and re-planting it to see what it might grow into. This is the one in the photos. Early on, somebody said it was a kind of spurge, so I googled Spurge till I fond my plant. This turned up a name for it: ‘Euphorbia Lathyris’, or the ‘Caper Spurge’.

Arrangement of bracts and seed pods - this thing just keeps getting bigger...

What Google also turned up was a lot of stories of people who’d pulled this one out as a weed and got the sap on them – the plant grows quite big and is particularly sappy – and has hospitalized numerous people over the years, even causing temporary blindness in severe cases of it getting in people’s eyes. All in all a lot of people considered it to be a noxious weed, because it readily seeds itself everywhere. The ‘capers’ – which are of course not real capers and you can’t eat them – these are the seed pods and when they’re ripe on a hot summer’s day you can hear them exploding all over the place.

So anyway, armed with this knowledge I admired my rescued weed all the more and, so cosseted in the flowerbed, it grew into a fine big fantastic thing, spreading seeds far and wide till it got a bit manky at the end of the year and I cut it down (with apologies). Once it flowers and makes seed pods that’s the end of the line for Euphorbia Lathyris anyway, so it had a more or less timely death. And no, I never did get the sap on me, though I did put on long sleeves, gloves and goggles when I removed it: they weren’t joking – it really is quite sappy and messy!

The 'capers' of the Caper Spurge - no, you cannot eat them!

So here we are, the fairy of the Caper Spurge, Euphorbia Lathyris, dressed from head to toe in a kinky little latex outfit! ‘Latex’ is also the sap that comes out of the plant, by the way, though not the sort from which one usually makes kinky wearables, but it’s a nice coincidence. And just to be on the safe side this fairy wears goggles, too. All in all, one of the more bizarrely dressed fetish fairies of the plant world

Euphorbia Lathyris, fairy of the Caper Spurge - drawing by Nancy Farmer

And that trip to casualty…? Well, I also have a pot-plant Euphorbia which is a fleshy thing that looks very like a cactus. I have now learnt that however much it may look like a cactus, it is not a good idea to put it next to a real cactus, at least, not if the cactus in question has needle-sharp spines. A total fluke, a mere single poke of the spiny cactus into the side of the fleshy plant with the toxic sap, the tiniest microscopic invisible squirt of sap and I ended up in casualty with very painful and streaming eye! It should be said that this was pretty minor and four hours after it had happened the eye had more or less got better on its own and I went home, having only seen the triage nurse by that time, but it was not the way I had intended to spend my morning. The following day I happened upon a tiny book entitled ‘Poison Plants’ and, like a squirt of toxic sap out of the blue, I was struck by the idea for the Poison Flower Fairies!

The potted Euphorbia, by the way, now resides in the spare room, well away from all sharp plants, but that was the start of all this, so, it had its uses…

The castor oil plant, Ricinus Communis

The first of these is a curious creature, not an ancient evil like Monkshood, but rumoured to be assisting terrorists all over the world, sought by several international law-enforcement agencies on several occasions and never caught but once. Toxic, certainly, but dangerous? Guilty as charged? These things are less certain of this slippery and elusive character.

This is the stately Castor Oil Plant, beloved of the planters of municipal gardens, provider of tens of thousands of tonnes of castor oil every year, and, should one wish to bother to process the dregs of the beans after that, also the source of the toxin Ricin.

Seedpod of Ricinus Communis - the beans are in here. I did read somewhere that they are not true beans, though I can't recal why. They realy are this colour, though - the colour of the photograph has not been enhanced in any way!

Ricin gained it’s unenviable reputation in its use as the poison used to murder Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov in London in 1978 in an incident apparently, and bizarrely, involving a weaponized umbrella.

Everybody has heard of Ricin and that it’s terribly dangerous. Well, it’s terribly toxic, true, but also, as poisons go, an apparently very difficult poison to actually use – you have actually to put it into someone’s bloodstream, not into, say, their cup of coffee (which would do for my previous two nasties for instance). The medical evidence suggests that ingesting it makes people throw up very quickly and thus generally gets rid of the poison. There is a fine article about Ricin, and its incidents and myths, by John Robertson on the Poison Garden Website here: http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk/atoz/ricinus_communis.htm

I’ve also found this: mention Ricin and several people will not only quote the umbrella incident, but also a very nasty terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995 – that wasn’t Ricin at all but Sarin, a nerve gas. Quite different and not one of my plants, at all! To kill people on an underground terrorist attack I imagine you would have to inject them, one, by one. And somebody would be bound to notice you doing that quite soon.

And I’m not joking about this plant being beloved of the planters of municipal gardens, either: once you know what it looks like you find those dark, glossy, spiky leaves poking out of the top of many an arrangement of garden annuals. I last saw it at a wedding a few months ago. It grows up quickly into a handsome plant, but in this climate never lasts the winter. It belongs in more Mediterranean climes, where it grows into a small tree. The thing is, if it’s so dangerous, why are our councils planting it all over the place where the general public can get at it? The answer, of course, is that this culprit is more reputation than substance. So, here we have the Ricin Fairy, caught once and never forgiven!

Ricina, the fairy of the castor oil plant

A weaponized umbrella? well, really, have you ever heard the like since The Avengers? So, Ricina, fairy of the Castor Oil Plant, carries not only her umbrella but has borrowed John Steed’s bowler hat to go with it!

In fact, the idea for this series came to me following a pot plant-related trip to casualty… but more on that when I come to Euphorbias, in the meantime I thought I would start with a real nasty. This is Monkshood, or Aconitum Napellus:

Monkshood: Aconitum Napellus

It’s a gorgeous blue, but quite rightly a fairly sinister looking thing, one of the more poisonous relatives of the Buttercup family, and a closer relative of Wolfsbane, which is also as toxic as the name implies.

This is a plant that has been known as a deadly poison since ancient times. In ‘Metamorphoses’ the Roman poet Ovid has a nice story about its creation: one of the Twelve labours of Hercules was to fetch Cerberus, the terrifying three-headed hound of the Underworld, and bring him up to the surface of the earth… using only his bare hands. This he duly did, but Cerberus was downright cross about this and, as he was dragged out of the underworld, fangs gnashing and heads tossing, flecks of monster-dog-spittle sprayed on the stony ground around about. And up sprang the plant Aconitum, or Monkshood. Any plant spawned from the spittle of a three-headed slavering monster realy ought to be treated with care.

Still, it is pretty, I have it growing underneath my pear tree, and it is a favourite with bees, so it’s not all bad.

So, here is my sketch of the Monkshood Fairy:

The Monkshood Fairy: Aconitum Napellus

I have to say I’m a little disappointed to have found no way to put in Cerberus, but I really think that would have made it another kind of picture altogether! There is a little spider in this sketch, however, which refers to another story from Ovid, that Athena sprinkled the plant (or its poison) on Arachne, to turn her into a spider, as punishment for boasting she was so good at weaving. That, of course, is a whole other story, and I already painted Arachne: http://www.nancyfarmer.net/im_msarachnesresidence.html

So, and on to my second toxic plant. This one is not nearly so poisonous, no, but it kills more people than any other plant in the world. Ever. Of course it needs no more introduction when I tell you it’s a tobacco plant:

Nicotiana

This is a slightly sorry specimen, gone past its best before I thought of painting the Poison Flower Fairies, but strangely appropriate for my purposes, since to my mind the dead flowers do have something of the look of a half-burnt cigarette…

Nicotiana - the Tobacco Fairy

So, these are the first of my disreputable fairies. I am working on another two sketches at least before I begin painting, so there are more to come…

If you’d like to read a lot more about poison plants, this website is very useful: http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk/atoz.htm

…and finally! After more burnishing the plate of Medusa makes an image like this: (click on the image and you can see a lot more detail)

Head of Medusa (Still Attached) - mezzotint print

…at least, it does when I get it right. As I mentioned before not only the making of the plate can be tricky, the inking-up is a disaster-prone process too. Too much ink wiped off and this happens:

Three Faced Mask - mezzotint print

And here are the finished copper plates from which I’m printing:

copper mezzotint plates

So, end of my first attempts! I have to say I cannot think of another technique that is actually like this in its ability to work from black to white, without cross-hatching (which I hate) and without having to draw or paint in white on top of a black surface (which is usually an unsatisfactory way to go about things, white paper having a luminosity that most white paint doesn’t) so, while it’s admittedly time-consuming I am liking this technique. It has possibilities!

…so, yesterday was the moment of truth, or at least, one moment of truth. The image on the little copper plate on which I’ve been working may look very nice, but the important thing is what will it look like as a print?

As I explained, the image is created by starting with a roughened surface and burnishing areas of it smooth, or partially smooth, with steel tools. What will be the lighter areas (in the final print) are shiny areas on the copper plate against the matt areas of the background. Now it’s time to ink up the plate and see what the print is like.

Mezzotint plated inked-up and ready to print

The ink is very thick and goey and goes on when the plate is warmed up on a hotplate (which makes the ink more runny). The whole surface of the plate is covered with ink  and then the plate is removed from the hotplate and as it cools, much of the ink must be wiped off again. there is an art to this: wipe it too hot, or too much, and too much ink will come off and the print will be too pale and have bits missing; wipe it too cold or not enough, and not enough ink will come off, and the print will be too dark. And of course if I mix up the ink very thick, or more runny, that will make a difference too. So many variables!

The picture above is the plate wiped and ready to print. The ink has wiped more-or-less clean off the areas that I previously smoothed with the burnishing tool, while the areas that still have a heavy texture have held onto the ink. The ink, incidentally, is wiped away with scrim (the gauzy material that you set in plaster to make a plaster cast) and finished off with wiping with tissue paper.

To print the plate, it is laid on the flat steel bed of the printing press, the paper laid on top of it, followed by three layers of rather special blankets, and then a steel roler goes oveer the top of everything, squashing the paper onto the plate. And here’s the result:

The mezzotint print revealed: first proof

Ta Da! Actually, this was not a bad start, but the print reveals that I do need to do some more burnishing, as it is all rather dark:

Mezzotint print of 'The head of Medusa' - needing a little more work...

…rather pleased with the snakes, though. And the advantage of the print being too dark is that I can always burnish the plate lighter, but I can’t go the other way. Back to the workbench then…

Meanwhile, here’s a second plate I’m working on:

Work in progress: mezzotint plate 2

This is another scetion taken from one of my paintings, this time from a painting called ‘Better the Last Smile than the First Laughter’ . This photo is taken when I was half way through burnishing, I also printed this one, it also needs more work… ‘A first Attempt at Mezzotint part 3′  coming up next time.

On a competely differet note, I just thought I’d show you the latest in my series of ‘Spelling Animals’ – a birthday card for one of my nieces, Georgia:

Spelling Animals: Georgia in cats

I’m thinking that I might offer the Spelling Animals as commissions: your name / grandchild’s name / nieces name etc. etc. as an original drawing. My sister has started having these framed and they look rather sweet. Any name in Cats or Lizards (other animals considered) email me for more details!

Mezzotint engraving on copper. Size: 5 x 6cm

A brand new blog and a brand new process all at once! So, I have my website (http://www.nancyfarmer.net) for the finished stuff, and Facebook for flippant one-liners, but where to put something more substantial? Ah ha, a blog, I thought… Well, I shall give it a try, we will see if it lasts.

Coincidentally, the picture above is a brand new technique for me. I have been making etching prints for some time (http://www.nancyfarmer.net/gal_etchings.html), and have begun to borrow techniques from mezzotint, so I thought I’d try it properly.

So, what is a Mezzotint? It’s a form of engraving where the image is built up on a metal plate, which is then inked, and used to make hand-made prints. The plate here is made of copper. In this process in particular the whole plate is first roughened by working over it with a ‘mezzotint rocker’ – a toothed tool that is rocked over the whole surface of the metal in several passes in different directions untill the entire surface is roughened with little burrs. I must admit, I didn’t do that bit – I am waiting to see if the process works for me before I think about investing in a specialized and costly tool for the job. So the pre-roughened plate came to me in that state, and I have put the image in by burnishing – smoothing down the surface of the plate with steel burnishers, like these ones here:

…and occasionally scraping the surface of the plate as well, to remove the roughened burrs, though frankly I’m not very good at using the scraper….

So, the image shows up because it is shiny, against the rest of the surface, which is matt. When it comes to printing, I shall cover the surface of the plate with a very sticky ink and then wipe all the excess ink off again. Where the surface is shiny, the ink should come off clean, where the surface is rough the ink will stay in the pitted surface, and of course there are places in between these two extremes where some ink will stay.

The inked-up plate is then used to create a print with the use of a press: the plate is laid face-up on the press, and on top of it goes a sheet of paper, soaked in water and surface-dried so that it is pliable. On top of that go three very expensive and special blankets, and then the whole lot goes under the steel roller of the press, squashing the paper into the depressions and ink-filled pits in the surface of the plate, transferring the ink onto the paper and, one hopes, making a lovely image in the process. In theory. Like I say, I’ve never used the mezzotint process before, so I have no idea if what I end up with is going to be any good, but the inking and printing part is the same as printing from an etching plate, so that part of the process at least I am familiar with.

And that’s the thing about making hand-made prints in general – no matter how lovely the plate looks you never actually know if you’ve succeeded untill you print from it. We shall see next week, then….

The image, by the way, is from one of my paintings, ‘Medusa’s Gimps’ and you can see the whole thing on my website: http://www.nancyfarmer.net/im_medusas-gimps.html