Duck Story

A little while ago I mentioned how I had borrowed a stuffed duck from a pub called The Marquis of Lorne. In order to take the duck I had to give them something in return for the time duckie spent with me. So my little soft toy lamb, that I saw in a junk shop in Northcote, and couldn't resist, sat dutifully on the shelf in the pub for almost a month. I bet it was the time of his little soft toy lamby life!

So, Duckie became my model, I drew her, painted her and finally made a plate. A large perspex dry point plate. Almost didn't fit on my press!

It took a lot of rubbing and wiping to ink up this large perspex plate. Perspex isn't as nice to work with as copper is, I find it takes extra effort to get the ink just right on the plate and it's confusing because you can see ink on the back of the plate too. 

I inked up in sepia brown tones with black rubbed over the top in areas. I rubbed the ink clean in areas I wanted white and then over the wing I inked in a mixture of turquoise and black to give that flash of metallic green. That part of the duck has a special name, my mum knows what it's called, but I can't remember. Anyone else know?


And here is The Marquis Of Lorne's Duck. She'll be in my Exhibition next Thursday!

See The Gulls

I've some more new pieces just out of the drying boards this morning, the excitement of which got me out of my nice warm bed! I've been working on these plates for a while because they are recycled plates from my earlier small etchings of Australian native birds. I sanded down the backs of the old plates with varying grades of sandpaper until they were shiny and new looking. Then dry point etched my seagull drawings in to them. The seagull drawings are from sketches I made while doing my MFA a few years ago. I sketched such a lot then and it's great having so much base to work from. I really must make more time to collect new sketches for new pieces of work.

So, I've made a four plate etching and four single plate etchings. The seagulls were all sketched from outside the Melbourne State Library where they all seem to hang out in large numbers. I'd also like to make a book of the seagulls, I'll see if I get round to it before the exhibition on the 10th September. Getting close now!

Seagull I

Seagull II

Seagull III

Seagull IV

More Crows

I've been working most days in the gallery that I work in at the moment. My boss is away so my shifts have increased from once a week to four days and I'm just not getting much of my work done, hence no blog posts! 

But I've finally managed to print a few of my smaller crow plates. I've in fact made all eight plates into an artist book which I have yet to bound, but which hopefully will be included in my exhibition in September. I have also printed a number of the plates separately exclusively for my etsy shop which you can view here.

The prints are dry point and carborundum on 6 x 6cm recycled copper plates. I used the back of other plates for these, I wanted them to be rough and have lots of foul bite marks but many were a lot cleaner than I had hoped! But I feel they have turned out similar to how I planned. I really like the thick dark grainy tone of the carborundum and enjoyed painting straight onto the copper. 

As I learn all these little bits and pieces of technique and experimentation I get more and more excited about moving to Belfast at the end of September and getting into the Belfast Print Workshop and work larger scale again. I'll definitely miss Australia but I'm glad I'll not have to endure Melbourne summer next year. I would indeed prefer 9 months of winter than experience another summer like the last one!

Four Legged Friend Exhibition

Tomorrow night at Bird's Gallery in Kew, Melbourne, an exhibition opens called Four-Legged Friends. The exhibition runs from 19th Feb - 15th March.

I have three works included in the exhibition. They are dry point etchings and are taken from drawings I made while at Wye River last month. It was quite a rush to get them made and framed in time. I actually had the frames made before I was even able to make the etchings! This was possible because I had already made the plates for the etchings so knew what size the pictures would turn out.

These are my sketches from Wye River

I was pleased with how they turned out because I find it far easier to draw birds with only two legs rather than dogs, cats, cows or other four legged creatures, so when these drawings actually did look like dogs I was happy.


To make the plates I dry point etched into a thin perspex sheet with a sharp pointed needle. I decided to use sepia ink for a softer image.
They are each from an edition of 5, marked E.V. for Edition Variable. The variations are caused due to my technique of rubbing back the ink. I don't rub all the ink back beacuse I want to create tone in areas where there is no line work. It is very difficult (for me) to rub the ink in the exact same way for each print, thus E.V.!



In a few weeks time I will hopefully be listing the rest of the edition of these etchings in my etsy shop. Keep a look out for them, or just visit Bird's Gallery in Kew to see them in real life!


Or come and see me at Rose Street Artist's Market where I have a stall most Saturdays.