'Constructed City' 3: Groundwork Continued...

All Images: 'Constructed City' Screen Prints (Work In Progress), Leicester Print Workshop,
October 2019

Another weekend comes round, and I've managed to put in a few more hours on the very early stages of my first run of 'Constructed City' screen prints.  In fact, with the weather outside simulating some kind of Biblical deluge, hunkering down for an afternoon at Leicester Print Workshop seemed a perfectly sensible option - even if the short drive there through floundering Saturday afternoon traffic, was to become bafflingly complex.  As ever, once there - the logic of getting out of my own little cave, and capitalising on the LPW facilities, immediately made perfect sense.  Inevitably, the simple expedient of going somewhere else, specifically to work, focusses one's energies a bit.  You've made the effort to get there (and are paying by the hour for the privilege), so you might as well just crack on, and find out what might be achieved.

And the greater discipline that might imply, feels like it could be a useful strategy after an extended period relative creative sluggishness.  The decision to make printmaking the primary conduit for this new project (for the time being, at least), means it must largely progress at those times when I can access the necessary facilities.  That's weekends and school holidays, essentially.  Raw material can be collected, and sketchbook images,  developed, as on ongoing process - but actual results will be dependant on realistic scheduling and a degree of, for want of a better word - rigour.

Perhaps for the same reason, it feels like I'm digging in for a longer haul, this time round.  Previously, my forays into printmaking have resembled relatively short-lived 'smash and grab' incursions - often inserted as a side-issue into a wider-ranging overall project.  On those occasions, a few days of relatively hasty print activity, have usually yielded a shortish run of moderately resolved prints - followed by long months when I neglected to set foot in the workshop at all.  This time round, the hope is to adopt more of a little-and-often approach.  These prints will inevitably take longer to reach a conclusion, but are likely to do so in a more concentrated, multi-layered manner.  My hope is that imagery might evolve more organically, as a result of process, this time - and capitalise more fully on the bits and pieces of printing technique I've absorbed to date.  That's the plan, anyway.

As far as the images in this post go, it's really just a case of the customary work-in-progress views of printing tables and drying racks.  A second application of ink was applied to most of the sheets already in play, and a small number of new ones added.  A little experimental colour-mixing was carried out (albeit very much down the neutral end of the spectrum), and some consideration given to the layering of transparent inks.  On the sodden journey there and back, I reminded myself just how brilliant Magazine's 'Secondhand Daylight' album [1.] still sounds, and reflected that, just when you feel any residual interest in football dwindling away altogether - Leicester City splash their way to a 9 - 0 win.  Perhaps, this really is the end of days...

[1.]: Magazine, 'Secondhand Daylight', Virgin, 1979