After many years painting I have now turned my attention to printmaking, hand creating printing plates from a mountboard base. I ink them up and pull them through a printing press onto dampened paper. It sounds simple but it is really complicated! The process opened up a whole new world of creativity for me and has furthered discovery into mixed media too.
Shop online here for original Collagraph Prints, Paintings, prints and wildlife decal stickers.
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Email me: diane@dianeyoungartist.com About anything! Questions, enquiries, chat all welcome.
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As I wandered early in the day up the stairs, I was hoping that the Art Cooperative had not put my artworks into a dark cupboard somewhere in the coffee shop since, typically, I had left it to the very last day for clearing the wall.
It is funny how things turn out. There were just a couple of tables taken here in Woodruffs Café, and luckily not the one in the corner where I would have to awkwardly ask to shuffle table and chairs and irritated customers to get my stuff off the wall from behind.
“Have you sold that one?” a voice came from one of the taken tables as I grappled to take Scottish Mist down. Naomi (as I found out later) wasn’t just asking out of politeness, she was actually interested in buying it! She was just about to have brunch with her male companion. We had a detailed exchange about the situation, the picture, and with some umming and ahhing across the table regarding colour and price with said chap, and after they had consumed the brunch which had just arrived, I am very happy to say that I did make the sale.
But if I had not suggested meeting my friend on this day and she had not said let’s meet at 10.15am at Costa, and I had not left it to the last day to retrieve my pictures and so on, then I would not be going home without Scottish Mist.
I am guilty as most of us are of being irritated at things going badly; it is good to recognise when the world’s synergy conspires for things to work out well!
For more art, paintings, collagraphs and prints this is my shop link also at the top right of this page.
I started this little piece using some sturdy packaging left from Christmas! The miniature artworks are made the same way a collagraph plate using a variety of materials sealed onto a mountboard backing with the addition of gold liquid leaf.
Now available from my shop just click the link for more details.
It is so difficult to photograph gold and textural art and convey it’s lustrous detail in a snapshot. But it has to be done!
I am focusing here on mini plates, I like their individual quality as object and am trying to figure out how to use them as pieces of art in themselves.
Sundarbans is a delta where hundreds of rivers meet the Bay of Bengal represented by the wavy vertical lines of this artwork. This original collagraph is hand pulled onto Somerset Velvet 300gsm paper using Cranfield inks with watercolour detail.
A friend showed me some holiday snaps of puffins reminding me of how jealous I was when other artists had used their own reference for paintings of puffins. And also that I had actually got my own photos taken in 2019 when I visited the Northumberland coast. The clarity of the light and their endearing forms and colour makes them an easy subject matter. Here is a selection…perhaps I should get on and use them now.
Taking on a new technique can be good move for exploration, experimentation and rejuvenating creative energy! I really did need a change at the end of 2019 as I had ground to pretty much a halt. Collagraph printmaking is a completely different approach to painting and so now I have two very distinctive styles; painting up until 2019 and printmaking for 2020 and ongoing. Today my work is more textural, incorporating different techniques including monoprinting using dried leaves with nature continuing to be my inspiration.
The Kite below was printed using a mountboard collagraph plate, the leaves are monoprints added after the paper has dried and the bird has a little burnt sienna and yellow watercolour also reflected in small detail on the leaves.
Why do you put pictures on your walls, if you do? What might strike you as important in a picture? The obvious reason would be subject matter, maybe size for the space, the colours depicted, the colours of your room, what the image makes you feel, and other things that we cannot really put into words. You can justknow if a picture is right for you. They can just speakto you, if you know what I mean.
So why paint a scene like this?
At the time I was painting images of animals in mythology. My research led me to Korean Shaman imagery; I finally decided on the challenge of composing my own version of this traditional image from Korean culture.
The tiger’s size is exaggerated to convey it’s power and strength, the Shaman’s eyes are closed to display his trust in the tiger and how he feels at one with the world. You can almost feel the tigers warm breath on the Shaman’s toes! A trusting peaceful relationship with nature. Crane’s are often depicted in Asian art as they represent longevity, purity and peace. The mountain is of significance as a holy place. The Shaman shown in traditional images vary and are in fact a multicultural icon.
“Koreans still very strongly maintain traditions as old as their culture itself, that mountains are especially holy places of communication of energies between heaven and earth. The sacred aspects of these mountains and their relationships with the human communities around them are embodied in the ideas and icons of Sanshin [Mountain-spirit].”
From 2013 for a year or so I painted many ACEO’s. These are small pieces of artwork traded on Ebay to collectors around the world. Harvey the Aardvark was featured on the majority of them and looking in my PC files I produced (and sold!) over 160 of these tiny pieces of art measuring only 3.5 x 2″ (or 9 x 6 cm).
I had some of them printed up to a larger size; and have now put the remaining of them in my online shop. This is one of my early designs and one of my favourites, the original art being sold to a collector in the USA.
“It wasn’t Me” – with Harvey The Aardvark and Digger the Dog – print available to buy £10 Free P&P here.
So many ideas and so little time! I mean lots of people have ideas and don’t necessarily go with any of them at all, but one of the difficulties of knowing that you are going to create something is ruling out all those amazing ideas other than the one you choose to run with.
I am not suggesting that any idea will turn out well, but the more you that try the higher your success rate, and a lot of attempts end up in the bin along the way!
Also theoretically it is a good idea to go with a theme. Choose an idea and beat it to death, until you run out of steam. All those mistakes and all those gains made with something intentional in mind.
Since this is all theory let me show you some practice! OOPs I have to reveal that I haven’t followed my own advice at all!
I am inclined to representative work, I love making images of animals and birds. But then I can get a momentarily distracted by other ideas I am interested in too and head off in a different direction. I really would like to do a series based on images produced by NASA earth observatory. They have this amazing website of beautiful images from space being continually updated. I am as fascinated by these as I am fascinated by drone imagery of our coastline here in the UK; seeing the landscape from above and then understanding it from the ground is really interesting to me.
The work below is the Arkansas River from space. This sort of work moves me toward the abstract and helps me exercise less restraint on my colour combinations.
If you have seen any of my recent printmaking artwork (for sale here at www.dianeyoungartist.weebly.com) you might be wondering what is going on here. My paintings (mostly created between 2000 and 2019) often have some sort of storyline going on, and most of my paintings are inspired by animals or birds. Creating an imaginary image of animals behaving as humans that looks convincing is a challenge I have always relished!
The original of Daft Cows (Cows Life Drawing class) was painted when I was at Uni, around 2005. I have some cards left over still, I am not really sure who shares this sense of humour enough to send to someone else!
I make artwork which quite often gets surreptitiously tucked away; I am sure artists are all the same with this. This print of a painting has emerged from me turfing out some drawers and was from a long time ago, painted before the Life of Pi film was made and inspired by me reading the book. Only when these works have been hidden for some time does it enable me to become objective about the work as a whole. I left this style of painting behind some years ago now and since that refreshed my style completely on discovering Collagraph printmaking. Rediscovering this painting and looking at the brushstrokes I really like it a lot now and no longer feel the frustration of them as I did then.
Diane Young Artist 