What a difference a day makes

I don't know what its like where you are, but an English spring can be madder than a box of frogs, weather-wise. At the weekend it was so cold I had to light the fire, yesterday it shorts and flip-flops weather and today its been proper lashing it down. I like the fact the weather is always a lucky dip; reckon living somewhere more predictable would be dull. One bonus is that I've been waiting weeks for the right weather for one of the next batch of skylines paintings; I got my sky today in the nick of time. I'm planning to start painting again at the weekend all being well. It wasn't so much the sky I've been waiting for, its seeing how the falling rain affects the appearance of the wooded hillside above the mead and for that I needed just the right amount of rain.

PS. If the translate button can't cope with "lashing it down" in this context its heavy, squally rain

British Masters: In Search of England

The BBC's art output this year has been truly excellent; from pre-history to the dark ages and the 20th century there has been simple, sensitive and beautifully produced coverage. I stumbled onto the repeat of a series from a couple of years back which I hadn't seen before yesterday. British Masters traces a path through British painting. It has no great thesis or revolutionary scholarship but each episode shows a handful of artists from a particular period in the development of art, showcasing their work and contextualising it. Those of you who are regulars will have worked out that English landscape painting between the two world wars is phenomenally important to me and this happens to be what yesterday's episode concentrated on.

From a very personal point of view, the programme made Stanley Spencer a little more accessible to me; out of that entire generation of heavyweights he is the one that does least for me though I can appreciate his skill and his epic-ness. I think the fundamental difficulty I have is that we have no common ground. It also re-confirmed that I am inescapably a Nash-ite. The true value of the show though was that it showed me some work by John Piper I haven't seen before (I have to do a proper piece on him sooner or later) and reminded me about the quietest master of all, William Coldstream.

Coldstream thrashed around, directionless and lost, for some time before he found his calling. He ended up stripping all the glitz, glamour and pretension out of art. At his height between the wars, it was just him and a subject and the paintings did nothing more or less than show his subject with a beautiful, understated honesty. The quality is inescapable, but when your paintings are so quiet it is easy for the world to overlook them, easy to not notice them in a gallery, no matter how strong they are. In this instance there is an aptness to their beautiful invisibility; when a painting is about honestly depicting modern lives shouldn't it, as the programme said, be slow and dull, because that's how most people's lives are.

Adventures in Linocut continued...

Here it is, a snap of my first linocut. It's one of the bluebell glades in the woods above the mead. When I've done a few more I'll be wishing it were better, but for now I'm chuffed. I've printed half the edition now and will do the rest tomorrow. Only having done the odd proof up until now I am surprised at just how physically demanding printing with a baren is - it may be easier with a proper one which is designed for applying pressure but I can't justify that expense yet so am improvising.

It's 10 x 15cm and in Raw Umber on mulberry tissue. I'm talking to a framer and if I can afford it, black walnut should set the ink off nicely. I'll take a proper photo when I've finished printing.

Khadi Papers

With my first linocut just needing tweaking I have ordered some delicate handmade paper from Khadi.

Khadi is a small company working with paper makers in India and the surrounding countries. The Indian papers are handmade from rag in the Western tradition. They come in a huge range of sizes, up to perhaps the biggest handmade paper in the world. As each size is made on a mould of that size rather than being trimmed down they all have deckle edges, which is nice.

A lot of the non-Indian papers they source are in the Eastern tradition, with mulberry, lokta and mitsumata prominent in the range. In fact some of the papers aren't just the same species of bark the Japanese use, they are made with the same methods too. Their Himalayan range is effectively a budget priced handmade Japanese style range.

I have bought a lightweight smooth rag, one of the Himalayan Washi papers and mulberry tissue. As soon as they arrived I couldn't help myself; its proofing time! No photos yet until there are finished prints but here are first impressions.

These papers are very suited to block printing with care. There is obviously a long woodcut tradition in Japan which has evolved hand in hand with the evolution of Washi. It has enough transparency to enable you to see the progress of the print as you work it. It has a lovely absorbency and is astonishingly strong for such a thin paper. The mulberry tissue is surprisingly strong (although it becomes very delicate while saturated with wet ink) and has a beautiful, uneven transparency so will take the brightness of the board it is mounted on for framing and is very easy to see through whilst working, but it is essential to have a layer of paper between the baren and the paper to protect it. The rag is very smooth and far and away the softest Western style paper I have come across this side of blotting paper. This is because it is only lightly sized with gelatin. I would be reluctant to let watercolour anywhere near it even in heavier weights, but it looks like it would be an exquisite drawing surface. That very softness and absorbency means it picks up both the ink and the texture of the block with relatively little pressure.

They all have their place but for this set of prints I choose mulberry tissue. I need a bright white that the washi can't provide. The rag picks up detail almost too crisply for this design. The tissue can be crisp too, but less so, and its transparency means you can see progress clearly enough to manipulate the amount of ink it picks up - since this print is based on dappled sunlight this is a bonus. Tomorrow I have to work out a work area thats right for me; then its time for my first ever linocut edition...

Meadow flowers

There's now competition for the bluebells out on the mead. The section of it nearest to Staines is left to grow to hay each year unlike the rest which is grazed. Its knee high already, and chock full of wild flowers. I'll pick a little red clover blossom to make a gallon of wine but that's still a few days away; for now the mead is dominated by little yellow flowers like tall buttercups and pretty grasses.

Meanwhile the woods are in full leaf now and there are drifts of cow parsley against all the hedges where just a few months ago there were drifts of snow. Aren't seasons brilliant!