This week

Found this beauty at a carboot - full of old photographs!

Working out placement on paper for final images

Geting the final images

A photo from the carboot box of photographs

Been a busy bee in the print room avoiding scalpels in my foot

My hopes to use the letterpress this week

Starting to print, playing around with different textures and colour

A test print of a plate

Dry point

Printed two of the plates as a test, I'm pleased with the outcome

At this moment I have quite a few plates

A dry point production line of: image making in the sketchbook to inking up the plates. I'm really happy with how they are turning out, I feel that the dry point images really help deliver the fact I'm depicting. The shape of the disks are pleasing once on the page too, they look like little time frames.

Finding a medium

The last couple of weeks I have been busy finding a final medium for my final images. I have decided upon dry point - it matches my drawing style perfectly and I feel that as I have used most other types of printing medium this is the one I have enjoyed the most.

I have chosen to use circles to link back to my love of the circular portraits that were predominate in the victorian era. I feel this gives the work a nostalgic feeling of looking into Woolf's past. I am trying to show her life through tiny windows of imagery.

Trying to see what the plates would look like by placing news print over the dry point plates and rubbing over them. It didn't really work, but I liked the images that were created.

Titanic portraits trigger hope

I have been researching a lot about Edwardian/Victorian traditions this week, and feel really drawn to it. It started with me drawing this image of Virginia and her husband:

I really liked drawing a 'photograph'. I feel that because Woolf was middle class she would of had the money and luxury to have portraits taken, it also seems like something that would have been out of her comfort zone, she often hated looking someone in the eye if she didn't know them, and became embarrassed easily. This has led to more drawing and investigation of putting her in scenarios that she probably wouldn't have liked.

For this image, I placed a book light underneath the paper to see what it looked like, and to my pleasant surprise, it looked like a glowing heart. This looks aesthetically pleasing but also links to her great spirit, although she had a weak heart and was often incredibly ill, she still continued to plough on with her writing and inspiring other people. Virginia was also a fierce feminist that believed in women's rights (obviously) and during the war took to writing addresses on letters for a feminist group.

I then found this image while watching an 80's documentary on Titanic, it wasn't any relation to my project, I simply got swept up in the Titanic fever that everyone seemed to have. This is only a few seconds of the documentary but it shows two cabin crew, instantly I loved the design of the picture. After seeing this I dug out some old Butterick paper dress patterns and drew circles onto it:

It inspired me to draw further, perhaps including some of her favourite objects or some facts I have found about her:

WIP with J

Today I had a wip with Jonny, he said to keep going with the facts that I am currently illustrating and said that it was an interesting way of telling her life story - I know I've said it a million times, but I've found out some amazing facts about her that most illustrators would jump and down to draw, she really did lead such a strange and mysterious life. I am currently using the portrait like circle to tell the tale of her world and using facts to tell the viewer more about Woolf's life.
I feel this has been an easier way for me to show her life as it is in short sections, a small fact detailing one part of her personality. Jonny encouraged more of this, and as we speak I plan to illustrate "Woolf once had a Singer car that she drove into a hedge". I mentioned that she suffered from depression, and often horrible things like Opium and cocaine were used as remedies for simple things like headaches, I'm wondering if she crashed her car because she was taking such prescribed 'medicines'.

James Unsworth

Today, James Unsworth gave a talk about his work. Although some of it wasn't to my taste (The video especially) I did like his style of drawing. He drew in a compulsive way, often with simple tools - perhaps not the content but his style of drawing was one to be envied - I really liked it.

I had previously seen some of his work before he gave the talk, and I'll be honest - I believed it to be thoughtless and grotesque. I still think it's grotesque, but hearing him talk about his influences and reasoning for the imagery I no longer have that opinion.

Woolf diaries

Today I bought Virginia Woolf's abridged diaries. She avidly wrote a diary, reading it is so interesting. She seems to be obsessive with vanity. Not the way she looks mind, more the way society looks. She has little habits of listing things, and she is always cleaning her silver cutlery.

The most prominent factor in the book is her big gaps of absence from writing, were the reader can only guess that being unwell has prohibited her from writing.

I have taken to writing notes of the things that she has written, like:

"One of the queer things about the suburbs is that the vilest little red villas are always let, and that not one of them has an open window, or an uncurtained window. One house had curtains of yellow silk, striped with lace insertation. The rooms must be in semi-darkness: and I suppose rank with the smell of meat and human beings. I believe that being curtained is a sign of respectability - Sophie used to insist upon it."

It's backwards.. Sorry.