Relief printing

Expressed in a previous blog entry, printing has always fascinated me. A well-composed letterpress page is not only a joy to the eye, but if printed on good stock also exhibits great tactile qualities. Sadly the art of hand-composed pages is all but lost.

Image © PeteM2020

The quickly prepared and printed linocuts we did on Friday gave me a sense of revisiting the old art form. Then I added a bit of Photoshop, stirred gently and ended up with the best of both worlds:- 

Image © PeteM2020

Distracted

Image © PeteM2020

I have not had much time to pursue my art interests in past few weeks. However, today I managed to find a couple of hours to visit the 2011 Archibald Prize Exhibition at Tarrawarra Museum of Art. Although I had visited the exhibition in Sydney – to see it again with fresh eyes was very rewarding.  Amazing how an exciting exhibition can quickly improve one’s outlook and temporarily blot out problems. 

Fragile

Melbourne June 2011, Image © PeteM2020

My inspiration for this image came from Roger Dean, who designed the album covers and stage–sets for the band YES. Fragile – their first album (1971) started a long tradition of album covers showing Dean’s fantasy worlds.      

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Circus

A young Indian woman, wearing a colourful silk scarf, sat opposite me on the homebound train the other evening. I got quite captivated by the colours on the scarf – not only did they evoke happy memories of travelling in India but they also became the inspiration for the strong riotous colours in this large panoramic collage.

Image © PeteM2020

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Vienna: Art & Design

Don’t miss this exhibition, which is currently on at the NGV. I spent quite a few hours there today totally absorbed by the many and varied works on display. Gustav Klimt and his fellow artists are well known and admired, but I was equally fascinated by Otto Wagner’s architecture.


The full size replica of the façade of the “Die Zeit” building was to me worth the visit by itself. Not just the incredible design and workmanship, but I was also very much taken by the font face used in the signage.


If you are interested in paintings, drawings, photography, furniture, glass, silver or fashion of that time – it’s all there. Fantastic stuff!

artRage!

Seb encouragingly gave me a quick introduction to the free version of Artrage a few weeks ago. It didn’t look too difficult, so I decided to give it a go! The interface took a bit of fiddling with before I came to grips with the various levers and buttons scattered around the perimeter of the artwork. However, the supplied manual greatly helped to make sense of it all. Thankfully, the basic version of Artrage has only a few options to confuse a novice with!

Image © PeteM2020

I found my Wacom tablet indispensible with this program. For me, drawing is one of those procedures where something seems to get lost in the translation between brain and hand. Drawing with a mouse would only cause further haphazard and unintentional synaptic transmissions!

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