Friday 11th March 2011:

Today I attended the Affordable Art Fair in London. I saw many contempory pieces, which I really liked, and when viewing them I thought about how these could inspire my own work. I also took part in workshops about drypoint printing (artists working in drypoint draw the image directly onto the plate using a steel tipped ‘pencil’ that produces an added richness due to the burr (or shaving of metal that is turned up at the furrow). As the burrs are delicate and crush easily under the weight of the press, usually less than 50 impressions can be made) and collograph printing (derived from the word ‘collage’. Collographs are created by building up an image on a plate surface (cardboard, metal, or plastic) with glue and other materials thereby creating areas were the ink is retained).

For the drypoint printing, I created an image of an eye crying as I felt this would relate well to my work. I really liked the end result as you could see each of the marks making up the image, which I thought was effective. For the collograph printing, I just used many different textures to see what effect they would produce when printed. I found that the bubble wrap stood out the most and was quite eye-catching. We also printed these on backgrounds with had ripped up envelopes on which helped to make them more interesting. I also had a go at mono printing where I created the image of the eye crying again, which was also quite effective, especially with the contrast between the orange ink and the blue paper.

Target for today: Attend ‘Affordable Art Fair’ and remember what effect I’d like my work to have and how the pieces I see can influence and develop these ideas whilst viewing the work.

Target for tomorrow: Look up artists written down from the Affordable Art Fair and consider how their work may influences and inspire my own.