Cat-in-the-Box: another mezzotint

I am not sure if I had intended to do a series of mezzotint cats, but that is what seems to be happening! Besides, they are a useful subject and size to be practising with a technique that is fairly new to me, so here is my latest. This is not a drawing sketched from life but owners of cats will instantly recognize this behaviour as classic catishness. Below is the initial sketch on the aluminium plate, all the rest of the detail was made up as I went along. For more on the mezzotint process, have a look at…

Mezzotint done improperly

Printing ‘The Spiky Cat’… I promised this post was coming! While I was making the printing plate in the previous post it occurred to me that the mezzotint rocker – the tool that is used to put the texture on the plate first, produces a rather interesting line which might be reminiscent of the spiky hairiness of cats just on its own. The individual lines made by this tool aren’t usually seen in the final print – the idea is to ‘rock’ all over the plate in 8 different directions until you have an even texture of burrs and pock-marks,…

The 2015 calendar is here!

January 14th: I have about 5 calendars left which were returned from a gallery, if you would like one, they are now £7.50 including postage within the UK, please email me on mail@nancyfarmer.net There has been plenty posted here about the work-in-progress of these pictures – see my previous posts – but here is the point at which I invite you to purchase one! Price is £12 plus shipping, or £9.50 plus shipping if you have more than one. You can buy straight from me by emailing me at mail@nancyfarmer.net, and telling me how many you would like and where…

Mezzotint on aluminium: Percy Cat

I had another play with the mezzotint rocker yesterday, with a proper sketch first and everything. I took some photos as I went along, but I’m not going to explain the ‘rocking’ process in much detail as you can see that on this post of a few weeks ago. A cross-over has occurred between my two blogs – the drawing that this mezzotint is based on is one of my cat-of-the-day sketches. The printing plate is aluminium and is cut to the same size as the prints I have made into coasters. For a while I have thought that the…

Mezzotint on Aluminium: a new tool to play with!

I had a search going on Ebay for a Mezzotint Rocker. The search has probably been running for a couple of years and I think only once or twice did it turn up this rather obscure printmaking tool and at full price, which is not cheap. So when one appeared at half price last week, I could not resist… This post is mainly a series of photos of my experiments with mezzotint on a piece of aluminium (copper being the traditional material for this printing technique). If you would like to know more about how mezzotint – a slightly obscure…

The Master Plan

from 12 Views of the Tor: 2015 calendar What more can I add? This is the Master Plan: the title pretty much sums it up. There is an arch villain, an arch villain’s cat, an evil checklist…. and no James Bond to be seen. It’s obviously all going to work without a hitch… For those interested in the technicalities, this is another print entirely in drypoint, starting off with sandpapering the aluminium plate with very coarse sandpaper, then burnishing the surface where I didn’t want the background scratches. Then the trusty pointy tool drew the rest. There is an obvious…

Temporarily changing sides…

I have two more sets of drypoint prints for coasters, but since it is approaching that time of year I have switched sides and let a couple of angels in. They are not, you will find, much better behaved, but they have a taste for Champagne, which makes them feel they are superior to the devils. The Devil coasters appeared in a couple of my recent previous posts. There is around a dozen of each design, and they will all be £9 each (angels and devils) when I ultimately get around to selling them. If anyone is interested, send me…

Three Drinking Nudes, printed

Yesterday was a complete marathon of a printing session. With drypoint (see previous post), the ink is held only by the burr raised by scratching the metal, and it is easily damaged and flattened and the prints get progressively paler. I am told the best thing is simply to print all you can in one day, without stopping, to get the most from the plate…. So, 12 prints from each of three plates, which was asking a bit much for one day’s printing, but by the end of the day I had got it down to a fairly fine and…

Hydrophobia… printed

And the final image for next year’s calendar is complete! I think it came out ok in the end despite misgivings that I had thrown too many techniques at this particular plate: The snakes are more like cartoon snakes in this one than in any of the others, but it seemed appropriate! So that’s the calendar for 2014 – A Medusa For All Seasons. If you want to look back at the work in progress this link should show you all the calendar posts: https://nancyfarmer.wordpress.com/tag/calendar-2014/ There will of course be much more work to do before this becomes a calendar,…

Mixing Metaphors

And on to the next month in my 2014 Medusa Calendar! I thought I would tackle January with the help of the Romans… The month of January is of course named after the Roman god Janus. Janus is the god of beginnings, transitions, and – aparently – doorways… which probably count as transitions in any case. He is generally shown with two faces – onle looking to the future and one to the past. This seemed to be a more substantial idea than Medusa in the snow or something, a nice bit of metaphor and symbolism to start the year…