In the Better-Late-Than-Never-Department, a mention of the exhibition at Creek Creative in Faversham, on show from 3rd January until 20th January 2019 (if not longer).
Featuring three Faversham-based creative artists Mike Roberts, Alex Law and Robert Lamoon it has offered the opportunity for me to show some recent paintings, digital art and etchings. And to offer a peep at my previous life as a cartoonist.
Creek Printmakers (of which I am a member) are showing their work this coming week at the Fishslab Gallery in Whitstable. The prints on show are mostly from linocuts but there are silkscreen prints and monoprints too.
Fishslab Gallery,
Oxford Street,
Whitstable, CT5 1DB
Wednesday 16th to Tuesday 22nd September 2015
Open 10.30am – 5.00pm.
New(ish) work by me on show includes This Way! That Way!, Headless Chicken and Da Doo Run Run.
This Way! That Way! Linocut print and watercolour.
Headless Chicken. Linocut print.
Da Doo Run Run. Linocut print.
I’ve been trawling through cobweb-encrusted areas of computer hard drives and come across the cover artwork for the last-ever issue of Commodore Format. Featuring Roger Frames and his dog Debit doing the classic walk into the sunset.
The sun set on the C64 in 1995. Ah, but did it ever, really?
Uniquely, this Roger Frames artwork was produced in Adobe Illustrator instead of the usual ink and watercolour on board. I can’t remember the reason for this.
It might have been my reluctance to get out the inks to airbrush all that background area: my home studio in 1995 was a very small room in which most of it was taken up by a computer system!
Mike Roberts | This is elsewhere | iPad using Adobe Ideas
Mike Roberts | Marshes from Memory | Digital art using ArtRage 4
1. Linocut printmaking with Hugh Ribbans
Hugh Ribbans is a printmaker with a fine sense of design and pattern, whose work I discovered on my first visit to Faversham in a very interesting hat shop in West Street.
Hugh Ribbans | Kent Wildlife
That was two years ago. I’m not saying that it was Hugh’s work that brought me to live in Faversham, but it was part of the realisation that the North East Kent coast has a strong creative heart.
When Creek Creative teamed up with Hugh last autumn to run a linocut printmaking course, I was thrilled. A group of six very different but very eager students flourished under Hugh’s guidance and encouragement. The course was a great success and there has since been a second beginners’ course and a special one-day workshop concentrating on multi-block printing.
The nicest thing to come out of the course is that the six of us continue to meet up for a monthly printmaking day at Creek Creative.
It took a while to get my head around the reductive method of working – cutting away the whites – when I am more used to drawing on white paper. My first linocut “Beware of the Man” was perhaps overambitious, including reversed lettering, but I got there in the end. An “art cartoon” as it was described and I’m quite chuffed with that description.
Mike Roberts | Beware of the Man (linocut print)
My second linocut was completed after the course had finished and was inspired by a dog who followed me along the footpath over the marshes, constantly searching for bigger sticks to present to me. “Stick!” was accepted for exhibition in the East Kent Printmakers Exhibition at Herne Bay Museum & Gallery.
It was a strange experience seeing my work in a gallery – with a price tag on it! Will it sell before June 1st?
Mike Roberts | Stick! (linocut print)
2. Silkscreen printmaking at the Print Block, Whitstable
Emboldened by the linocut course I took things on a step further by signing up for one of Suki Hayes-Watkins’ screenprinting courses at her Print Block studio in Whitstable. Located on the East Quay, it was a rather bleak winter setting on dark and windy Tuesday nights! But inside the studio, a warm and happy atmosphere welcomed.
Mike Roberts | Dancing Man in Whitstable
Assisted by Karen Radford, the course took us through paper stencils, painting directly on to the screens and finally making photostencil screens.
For my photostencil screenprint I took a piece that originated as a doodle which I had already worked to full colour in Adobe Illustrator (for my business card) and pared this down to five spot colours. I printed out each spot colour as black on my inkjet printer to make the artwork for five stencils.
At the Print Block, working with five colours of ink that I physically mixed myself and knowing the order to print them was a new challenge. It was only when the fifth colour was on that I knew for certain the colours had worked well.
Silkscreen printing at the Print Block
Mike Roberts | Beach Boy (silkscreen print)
The Print Block was a great place to work: Suki and Karen were expert and supportive teachers and it was inspirational to see the work of people that they print editions for, including Paul Bommer, a favourite a mine.
Watercolour 25 x 21 cm.
26 Feb 2014
An image for my new business cards. Originally a doodle on the back of an office telephone list at Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, revisited and coloured in Illustrator.
The hair style? Remember, you saw it here first.
A self-promotional (pre-digital days) drawing on that clock-watching, is it time to go home yet feeling which afflicts office workers on Fridays.
… An editorial cartoon involving a whale and Buckingham Palace for something or other a long time ago.
Unless I trawl through all my invoices from 20-25 years back, I’m probably never going to remember why this cartoon was commissioned. I know, let’s have a caption competition…