Design-wise I keep struggling with where to start in the past I have drawn a variety of things on pottery, including boats, buoys, beach bungalows, bins, local buildings, and post boxes.
I sometimes still draw post boxes on my outgoing post.
I should talk about the project, the idea is to speed up the ceramics-making process, to be able to hand some of the making to an apprentice (long term)
So the idea was to look at printing, but having explored screen printing I’m not feeling it.
Drawings of Morecambe
So possibly looking at woodblock printing and making that part of the process of making. Either laser cut or using my Dremel.
So that means I want something bold and graphical, but still like it is my work, which isn’t graphical.
I didn’t know where to start, so I started with a warm-up of some of the pottery on my shelves. Pots by me at either end with a Doug Fitch jar and I can’t remember who made the vase (sorry)
I made a classic mistake of trying to make final images with no idea of what I actually wanted, I may trace these and try to make some better quality images, I don’t know.
I went back a step back and did thumbnail sketches, generally they don’t describe anything useful except left hand column in the middle, was a sketch based on Michael Kline's brushwork as it was looking at his work and Doug’s work that inspired a brief range of work I made a few years ago.
When I started this line of thinking I didn’t have a solution but I think the solution at least for testing might be to go back and use this as it will save me a lot of headaches at the moment. Also, a chance to look at other repeating patterns in rough and ready brushwork.
I created a whole bunch of iterations with various inks, brushes, pens and papers. I picked my favourite, altered its promotion slightly and inverted the image, so the laser cutter will etch away the black and leave the white.
Need to work on more options but that's to come.
