Category: Collage

Bits stuck on card

New Year 2023

Happy New Year!

I make New Year cards most years to send to friends and family. In recent years they have been prints: woodcuts or linocuts. This year it was a collage. My card this year is made of marbled paper and a kinetic band of people. The people are printed from carved rubber stamps. The concept was to show “through it all together”: people going under and over and through.

New Year Card 2023

Here is a short video to show how the centre band moves:

Here are the rubber stamps which made the people and the dogs. I cut them from a large pencil eraser.

Rubber stamps made from pencil eraser. They are each about 1cm high.

Here are some snaps of work in progress.

The marbled paper is from a pack of offcuts from the Wyvern Bindery. There are several different designs. The white card is watercolour paper from Jackson Art, cut down, with the offcuts used to make the moving band of people. I made about 45.

Here are cards from some previous years.

Happy New Year 2023!

Mud Dock, Bristol

After a swim in Cleveden at high tide, I walked along the docks at Bristol.

I remember when “Watershed” was a kind of hippy place, half-derelict, half-dwelling, with a shop selling joss sticks, and a long smock-style dress in a wood-block print, that I should have bought. Or may be I did buy it. Or may be I agonised over the price, and waited, and thought, and now Watershed is a totally different place, with a cinema, and several bars, and they’ve mended the pavement outside, and parked yachts outside, and built a bridge.

The bridge leads past the art gallery called “Arnolfini” to the restaurant and bike shop called “Mud Dock”. I sat on a cast iron mooring post, and drew a picture.

Mud Dock, Bristol 22nd September 2021, 10″ x 8″ in Sketchbook 10

I did the pen and ink on location and added the colour back home at my desk.

This picture includes some collage: the slivers of paper on the bottom right are stuck on with rice glue. Underneath them, you see the “shadows” which I made by placing slivers of paper on the wet watercolour and waiting for them to dry.

Collage/postcard: a corner of the flat

Here is a postcard from indoors:

It shows a corner of the flat. You see the sun outside, and birds, and the city. You see parks, rivers and the great outdoors. But mostly, you see the sun on the carpet.

Connection to friends in another city

Here is a postcard collage I sent to my friends in another city.

It is inspired by the website: sendmeapostcart.com, and shows the connections we make, the lines which bind us, the distances which separate us, and the pleasure I found in meeting this family again after many years.

  • Work in progress.
  • On the way to the post office

A story book

I made a story book for a young friend. It describes an evening we spent together back in December. Here are some of the illustrations:

  • Title page.
  • The long route home.
  • I have forgotten the key. How stupid is that?
  • The rules are explained.
  • I am told off. I didn’t follow the rules.
  • Here’s the view of the table: from above!
  • We rush.
  • On the way home.
  • I present the book.
  • End page.
  • Attribution.
A few of the illustrations from the book.

I made the illustrations by cutting shapes out of the coloured parts of magazines. Magazine pages are suitably strong and luxuriously glossy. Sometimes the pictures have textures which are helpful to the theme. The figures are about an inch high or less. It was very fiddly.

I decided to give the book a hard cover. Out there in the wild, it would need some protection. I’d not done a hard cover binding before. I examined several hardback books and had a go. Here are some pictures of the construction process:

  • The total mess of my materials box. Trying to find something suitable for binding a book.
  • Ruggedising the binding.
  • The binding is made stronger by adding pieces of silk and PVA glue.
  • The cover: the spine is a piece of linen curtaining.
  • Inside view of the cover: the cardboard spine is kept in place by some Japanese paper, which is strong and flexible.
  • Close up of the top of the spine: linen and Japanese paper.
  • Testing that the spine bent OK. It did.
  • The spine bends fine. It already looks quite authentic.
  • The inside of the book and the cover, ready to go together.
  • The inside of the book.
  • The cover.
  • I covered the cover in some amazing paper I found.
  • Covering the cover.
  • The cover centre.
  • Cover, centre, close up.
  • Now I glue in the pages.
  • I realised that the cover glue must not go to the edges. So I put a length of washi tape (green and white striped) to remind me not to go crazy with the glue.
  • The back end-page ready to glue in place.
  • The front of the finished book.
  • Here’s the spine.
  • The spine: not perfect, but good for a first attempt.
  • Spine successfully opens out flat.
  • See the wonderful paper of the cover. It shines.
Making the book.

It worked well! It remains to be seen how it fares. It’s out there now, being read and enjoyed by one of the characters in the story.

Insects Collage

I made a postcard for friends in Basel. It shows the insect life in Crete.

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Here are some details, and the work under construction.

 

 

Postcard detail
The “window”
The “insects” behind the window
Glue drying

The idea was that the flies would jump out of the window when it was opened. The postcard is painted using pigments made from the earth.

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Update 28th May: I learned by email that all insects arrived intact, and are now dangerously positioned next to a Gecko.

This collage postcard is inspired by the work of https://sendmeapostcart.com

The Cuttlefish

I made a collage postcard inspired by “the Blue Planet” series on BBC2.

This is the cuttlefish. The sea bed is made of breakfast cereal, and the seaweed is strands of unraveled rope.A fish-like being at the top is made of a speckled feather I found.

The post card went off on its journey to Switzerland on 1st Dec. I hope it gets there.

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Martin Hicklin’s work inspires these collage postcards.

The Guardian of the Vines

Another collage postcard. I posted this one in London 18th May.

It looks a bit crinkled because the cardboard was damp with PVA glue, and then dried. The white shape on the bottom right is a flake of white paint I found on the ground. It must have been polyurethane paint, because it was flexible and easy to cut. I left the edge ragged, as found. Top left is a map of Crete from the packet of olives. The fence is made of palm leaf. The leaves didn’t want to go flat.

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Here is work in progress.

 

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The journey to the chapel of St Antonis

Here is a collage made for friends in Switzerland.

I posted it at the Post Office in Kalami on 8th May. The official there did not seem to be concentrating very hard. He looked dubiously at the word “Switzerland” on the address. I think I need to find out what “Switzerland” is in Greek.

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The card is made from seeds and bits found on the walk.

Here is the construction in progress. Clothes pegs are an important tool.

Postcard – Fuengirola

This is a postcard I sent to my friends in Switzerland, inspired by the work of Martin Hicklin.

It celebrates our visit to Fuengirola and includes items found on the beach, and some confetti from a carnival we happened across in Ronda.

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