Cath Sheard Art

Tag: Gelli Prints

  • When a journal disappoints

    I was excited to get a couple of Stillman & Birn Delta journals on sale – they’re expensive here in New Zealand so had high hopes. I chose 7×7” Delta because they have heavy weight 270gsm which the website says is ‘ideal for wet and dry media, including watercolour and ink’.

    I taped every second page because I like a clean border, but also enjoy a more organic edge sometimes. I want to love my new journals, but don’t. The paper pills easily when you use water, so washes have spots in them. Even with heating the tape prior to pulling it, the paper tears easily. They’re just not great for the way I work, and at that weight I expect the paper to be more robust.

    Putting that aside, I visited Ethel Anne Antiques in Hāwera today. They’re running a pop-up shop with 60% off. I picked up four music score books for just $12. I’ll be going back to find maps, more music and maybe an old textbook or two. The owner is lovely, and was happy to chat about what I’d be doing with the music. Like me, she loves seeing old things given new life, rather than ending up in the rubbish.

    I came home and gelli printed on a few pages to get started, then grabbed one of my collage landscape journals. New papers inspired me and I completed about 8 pages in a row. I can see some themes emerging, as is often the case when I work in a hurry.

  • Being true to yourself

    I have entered the Awagami International Miniature Print Exhibition in Japan. Prints have to be on A4 washi paper. I made a few prints on copier paper to get used to the size, then swapped to washi. I loved the first prints but keep going for another two or three weeks because “it needs to be my best print”.

    I ended up with around 35 prints, and 25 of those were worth considering. I laid them out on the floor and quickly got down to 10, then 6. I showed them on Facebook and Bluesky, and people told me their top pick.

    So did I package up the one that got the most votes? No, far from it. I need to send the worth that speaks to me, and that represents my art, and that’s the only criteria that matters aside from the regulations. The piece I chose was one of the very first I did. I should have know that fiddling around would not be helpful!

  • 100TinyTreasures

    I’ve been an inconsistent blogger lately. Life seems a bit fragmented and busy. It’s not bad, just different, for all kinds of reasons.

    I’m still doing #100TinyTreasures and have been posting on Bluesky and Facebook, but not here, so it’s catch up time. An impact on any project that inspires consistent practice is, for me anyway, that it reinforces and solidifies the hand of the artist. What marks and shapes do I go back to time after time? What formats and focal areas speak most clearly to me?

    At the weekend I taught a gelli printing class with four artists. They each had an identical pack of papers, access to the same paints, stencils and tools. At the end of two and a half hours there were four completely different sets of gelli prints. The hand of the artist always shows…

  • What makes a landscape?

    Sometimes I veer off into florals, faces, or other distractions, but my deepest artistic love is the landscape. Memories of the landscape, fragments of the landscape: colours, shapes, shadows, glimpses…

    I’m interested in what makes something read as landscape. Is it the colours? Shapes? The way things are stacked up from land to sky? I’ve been exploring the idea in small 6×6 collages. As with any series, they’re getting looser and more abstract as the series progresses.

  • A proving ground

    My journals are a safe place to play but also somewhere for ideas to prove themselves or die… Sometimes an idea isn’t sustainable for practical reasons, perhaps because of the materials or energy required.

    Other times I start to play with an idea and, 2 or 3 iterations along, I’m getting bored with it. If an idea is going to become a series, even a small one, it’s needs to hold my attention for a sustained period of time.

    There’s been a couple of things recently I’ve tried and dropped for the above reasons. So I’ve gone back a bit to go forward – relooking at ideas that have captivated me in the past, and putting a fresh twist on them.

    I’m playing with ridge lines, mountains and the landscape generally. Because it’s a familiar subject I’m able to play around with my materials more. These early trial works incorporate gelli prints, acrylic paint, acrylic ink, water soluble pencils, Kuretake watercolours and Ranger Distress Foundry Wax.