Working Methods: Shaping Up

All Images: 'Constructed City' Painting Panels (Work in Progress), April 2020

Needs must, when the virus drives - and so it seems that my 'Constructed City' project must adapt to changing conditions.  Until recently, I had imagined it as a largely print and collage-based enterprise.  However, for obvious reasons, I'm unable to continue my printing activities at Leicester Print Workshop.  I also find myself embarrassingly short, at home at least, of the proper kind of table space needed to lay my existing prints out, in order to start reassembling them on the scale I envisage.

But, as a million fatuous training workshops have taught us, there are no real problems - only opportunities.  Such a challenge really just represents a series of paintings I haven't executed yet - so I've decided to expand the scope of the project to include exactly that.  Consequently, I've spent much of the locked-down Easter period constructing panels, in preparation.  The nature of the proposed imagery suggests shaped formats - which is something I've not worked on for many years, and should make for a stimulating change.  It also gives me a chance to recycle and join-together some old panels I've had cluttering- up the place for quite a while.

The glorious weather made the whole process of glueing, nailing, screwing, sanding and priming, thoroughly enjoyable for a few days, in my sunny little back yard.  The only real problem is that (in classic bumbling idiot style) I now find that large one is too big to go up the narrow stairs to my newly reorganised painting 'studio'.  Secretly, I suspected it would be the case - but the thing just feels right at that scale anyway.  So, for once, I stubbornly put practicality (and the tape measure) to one side.  Anyway, as I say,  there are no problems - just opportunities.  Perhaps, if the favourable weather persists -  that big panel will offer the opportunity to do some outdoor painting.  In the meantime, there are a couple of smaller ones to get on with indoors, and the wherewithal to make yet more, as required.

There's nothing for it - I'd better get the brushes out, then...

           

'Constructed City' 13: Laid Off

All Images: 'Constructed City' Screen Prints (Work in Progress),
Leicester Print Workshop, March 2020

For fairly obvious reasons, my regular printing activities at Leicester Print Workshop are now on hold for the foreseeable future.  In fact, it's already been two weeks since I made my last visit - during the second of which, my school workplace has also been mostly closed.  Like much of the population, I'm effectively living a locked-down life, and wondering just how different life will be in the future.  I'm choosing to believe there is 'life', and a 'future', if for no other reason that agonising over the alternative is futile and leads absolutely nowhere.  Who knows? - we may even emerge from all this, one day, a little wiser, if significantly chastened - and thus inclined to construct a slightly saner future.

Anyway, while we wait indoors, to find out whether or not this really is Armageddon, creative work remains as resilient a bulwark against negativity and despair, as it ever was.  I can't print, so have made the decision to expand the scope of my 'Constructed City' project to include painting as well - and have begun preparing a reasonably large shaped panel, accordingly.  But more of that in due course.  For now, it seems only reasonable to draw a line under what I achieved on my last couple of trips to LPW, before it closed.    

The good news is that I was able to bring all the pre-existing prints in progress to some kind of conclusion, in one way or another.  In many cases that involved adding new layers of (a slightly sickly) muted yellow, or of a lightish grey, and of black.  that yellow felt like a bit of a risk, but it actually helped to modulate some of the problematic bright yellow sheets, which had been bugging me slightly for many weeks.  As usual, the addition of more black provided a pretty direct way to tie together those last few that been refusing to just 'sit down' properly.

The results are both darker and denser than I originally envisaged, and I may have to drastically rethink my original idea that these images would function largely as backgrounds.  But that's okay - there's plenty of pleasingly nuanced detail going on within all that multi-layered complexity.  And, if it wasn't already obvious - it proves that an intuitive, in-the-moment, decision making approach works better for me, these days, than too much pre-planning.  It's essentially how my paintings have evolved in recent years, and it seems that's the kind of printer I'm going to be too.  One day, I might set myself the task of producing a technically slick, consistent edition of prints, but for now, there aren't two alike - and all that limitless variation feels fine by me.  It's also appears I'm unlikely to be adopting a less-is-more approach, anytime soon.  That's okay too - I've always tended more to a maximalist's approach to problem solving.  We can only be the artists we were always going to be, regardless of medium. 

Anyway, there's not much else to say about these - so I'll let you judge for yourself, for now.  In reality, much remains up for grabs, even now, as it's still my intention to start cutting up and reconfiguring many of these - collage style.  That in itself, will involve another round of improvisation and intuitive decision making.  The next time you see them, they may look considerably different all over again. 

It only remains to express the hope that anyone reading this, along with all those you care about, can remain safe and healthy in the coming weeks and months.  Whatever your circumstances - I hope they remain survivable, and that the 'symptoms' any of us may succumb to, are as mild as possible.  And, ultimately, nothing's changed really - I'm still resolved to just keep making stuff until I no longer can.

'Constructed City' 11: C

All Images: 'Constructed City' Screen Prints (Work In progress), Leicester Print Workshop,
February, 2020

...And the Cyan layer goes on to the first of my CMYK separated photographic 'Fragments'.  The aim is to print a small edition of these as straight as possible, with the occurring at a later collage stage.  Inevitably though, a few minor accidents, and a few deliberate experiments have crept in along the way too.  I'll see exactly what I've actually got, once the black goes on.  With valuable Half Term hours on the horizon - that should be achieved by the end of this month.

'Constructed City 10': Y/M

All Images: 'Constructed City' Screen Prints (Work In Progress), Leicester Print Workshop,
January 2020

Progress continues apace, and the yellow, and much of the magenta, have gone down on the first of my 'fragments'.  These colour-separated images will ultimately supply a wholly photographic element within my proposed 'Constructed City' composites, and I'm hoping there'll be quite a few.  One thing at a time though; for now I just need to concentrate on keeping that registration as tight as possible.

'Fragment' (Source Image), Photo-Manipulated Digital Image.

'Constructed City 9': Clocking Back On

All Images: 'Constructed City' Screen Prints (Work In Progress), Leicester Print Workshop,January 2020

Having filled-in the Festive print studio recess with a bit of cheeky painting action, I got back into Leicester Print Workshop, the other weekend, and picked-up from where I exited 2019, with the 'Constructed City' project.

I spent an hour or two laying down another grey layer on some of my still-active prints (which, like everything else, should ultimately form sections of something larger), but the main effort really went into preparing some new screens.  These will be used to print the first CMYK element of the project, and thus represent a significant step forward in a project that, for purely logistical reasons, is progressing incrementally.

In the long-run, there'll be a number of these photographic CMYK sections, and it occurs to me that their actual printing should become fairly rapid (being largely a matter of mechanically reproducing already resolved images).  Hopefully, that means the whole project will feel like it's accelerating into 2020.  We can but hope.

There's little else of significance to say just now - so I'll detain you no longer, and we can all just get on with our day.

'Constructed City' 8: Designated Break

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

At the risk of over-saturating the internet with yet more images of my 'Constructed City' screen prints in progress - here is the last instalment of the year/decade.  Apologies if anyone is bored with these, but it still seems preferable to keep reporting on ongoing activity, than to go dark in the absence of definitively completed work.

Leicester Print Workshop is closed now, until mid January - so I was pleased to have grabbed a last chance to put in a few hours just before Christmas, if only to maintain the gentle, but steady momentum that's built around this project.  The studio lay-off also allows time for a little reflection on what's been achieved to date, and how things might progress in the new year.  There's a sizeable stack of these closely-related images now - some of them having reached a considerable level of intensity and multi-layered complexity.  But the reality is, these wallpapered girder motifs were originally only intended to supply a kind of background layer for more photographically detailed elements, as per my original sketchbook collages.

'Constructed City' Sketchbook Collage Study, October 2019

It's probably the case that some of these are already a little too concentrated to serve that purpose, but it's definitely still my intention to combine at least some with less abstracted elements.  The current plan is that many such new motifs will be arrived at as four-colour separations; which will both capitalise on the training course I completed at LPW, last year -  and give visitors here a different kind of work-in-progress shot (if nothing else) in 2020.  In fact, the ultimate aim is that these 'CC' pieces should eventually build into much larger composites, through a process of collage - spreading exponentially, in much the same way that new developments are currently filling-in significant sections of the Leicester street map, and skyline.

Consequently, whilst I suspect there'll be no shortage of 'Sit. Rep.'-type bulletins to come - I can also only hope that what you see here (and in various recent posts), will eventually be revealed as merely the early stages of something rather more impressive.  As ever - we'll see...