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January is tough. It’s not spring, it’s hardcore winter. My January survival strategy has been to be as busy as possible, making stuff, going places, planning and saying yes to everything and it’s actually working, this month has gone pretty quickly. The weather has been foul and at times this has felt personal, the winter flooding in our area has been the worst I’ve seen. Even so, I have maintained a level of ‘busy’ that has not just passed the time, but resulted in some pieces of work that I like and it has pushed me a little further on towards the elusive, ‘cohesive visual language’ which I fear I may be seeking for the rest of my life.
I’ve worked on a couple of ‘sets’, one, a set of botanically orientated lino cuts and the other a set of collaged magpies. I love magpies and whilst the trees are bare of leaves, magpies, other corvids and ‘big’ birds are more visible than usual. The ‘one for sorrow, two for joy…’ idiom is an easy theme to fall on, and being one of those people who adheres to the automatic superstitious saluting of the single magpie on sight, and then sighs with relief when a second bird comes into view, I’ve happily indulged in it.
Working on sets of prints is something I can’t help doing, maybe it’s from years of graphic design ‘alternatives’…can you try it like this…what’s it like if you do that…trying to meet client demands without completely compromising the design…you know the scenario. But I love a ‘set’, a few things that are not the same, but clearly are related. When I was doing my degree, one of my tutors said that although my visual language wasn’t fully formed, he could still see my ‘fingerprints’ on all my work, I love this expression and often think of it when I’m trying to look for cohesion in my work.
Working on multiples is a great way to progress, not every piece of the set will fit or be a total success but you can be assured that you will make progress between your first and last piece. I once started an alphabet…I think I got to ‘K’ before I decided to give up, it had started to feel a bit like reading a book I felt I really should finish. I might try again some time, perhaps making better decisions about size and medium; they were quite large lino blocks and so boring when I remember them now…what was I thinking! So one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, etc. is coming together pretty quickly, just six and seven remaining and maybe a whisper of my visual language developing, perhaps this is the DuoLingo of illustration…I’ve maintained my streak to ‘five for silver’ better not break it now!
