A week in the life of a Playworker/Maker: Monday

Being a Playworker and making stuff for a living is a precarious way to live. I’ve got 3 jobs plus the self-employed making. But I wouldn’t change it for the world. I’m going to give you an insight into my week of job juggling in East London. Who else can say their week is like this…every week!

I spent my Sunday sewing new lined notebooks and taking a short trip on the DLR to Greenwich Observatory Park to do some drawing. I love that park, and what an amazing view of the city.

From up there you can see the whole skyline of the city which is currently littered with cranes as the pre-Olympics building work goes underway. You can’t escape it. Greenwich Park itself is planned to host the Equestrian events with a strong local campaign brewing against the plans.

This morning I kicked off my week with the all too familiar travel from Tower Hamlets to Hackney where I went to the house of the family where I work 1:1 with a young person with Aspergers Syndrome. I’ve worked supporting this young person since June 2010 and we get on brilliantly. Spending time together is most of the time a total pleasure. In the past I’ve worked as much as 20 hours a week with this young person but currently we have a once weekly catch up.

Today our task was to tidy a typical teenage bomb site of a bedroom. While we sorted the clothes I become agony aunt, acting as a sounding board for interactions with peers. This kind of coaching is crucial for a young person with Aspergers for whom implicit social boundaries and rules must be explicitly learned.

After we had cleaned the bedroom until the sense of achievement was strongly felt we were off on the bus to Madame Tussauds! What an exciting and fantastic time we had. There was even chance for some impromptu history lessons prompted by Nelson Mandela, Hitler, Margret Thatcher amongst many many more.

I was happy to have the chance to vent some anger at a man both me and the young person I work with know as the man taking all the money away from communities…

After meeting all the celebrities and international figures there were to meet we then went on an adventure to find this famed new Routemaster bus that Boris keeps banging on about. We went to Tottenham Court Road to catch the 38. After all the hype surprise surprise it is literally just 1 new bus which wasn’t in the area when we were waiting. The ‘Vanity Bus’ some people call it…hmm…whatever could they mean by that?!

And then home I came.

Tomorrow morning bright and early I’m on the Playbus in Walthamstow. Looking forward to telling you all about it.

50 ways to deal with change

In a recent house move I took a moment to sketch the space I was moving out of. Some people might call this procrastination from packing, but this was the first sketch I had drawn in months. I took out the sketchbook given to me as a gift by a close friend who has now moved away and left a noticable hole in my life in London and without even the usual intimidation of the unimprovable new white pages, I grabbed the nearest pen.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to get into the print studio but with the mulitple other jobs on the go and lots to sort out in the new flat I didn’t have time to organise what I was going to print. I thought of my sketch. With a big stack of black cards sitting there always hoping to have something printed on them, I put the two together.

It was really great to be back in the print workshop, feeling my way around again and printing something that had no pressure, no deadline, no purpose and was uncomplicated.

So, I’ve now got 50 cards with my sketch printed on. 50 little versions of a bit of space and time that no longer exists.

Here are a few (pictured in a corner of the work in progress that is the new flat):

I’m going to use the opportunity to send lots of note cards to catch up with people. And then I’m going to work on top of some of them. I’m going to see what comes out of that sketch. I’ll post any on here that I finish.

Happy New Year to you. Hope you are having some positive new beginnings too.

🙂

Screen Print Revolution on Etsy

As a new member of online shop Etsy, I’ve been taking a look at the rebellious screen printers on there.

Take a look at this selection of hand printed brilliance

Visual Thinking: Reading the Tea Leaves

I’ve been looking around for some visual thinking exercises and I came accross one that involved making lots of tea. Once the tea is made, all you need to do is leave your tea bags to dry on cue cards. Once the bags are dried just throw them away and your left with some weird splat or other to get your brain thinking. Your pen does the rest of the work.

My first 4 tea doodles definitely have a particular theme;

…Spring certainly feels like it’s arriving early…and I think I need to get out more and enjoy it!

Next time you make a cuppa, give it a go!

Life drawing and visual thinking

Doing regular life drawing is one of my new years resolutions but this week was the first time I actually sat down to it. It’s a shame. It’s one of those things that gets pushed back and not prioritised. When work settles down I’m going to try go at least once a week.

I did a search online for exercises to help practice visual thinking and I came accross this one which involves turning tea stains into doodles. I’ve now got some fresh tea stains drying and I’m going to give it a go. I’ll post the best ones on here. Why not give it a go. I’de love to see what you come up with.

Learning lessons in the print workshop

Nearly 2 years ago now, one early Spring night, I did a sketch of St Pauls. Just biro, just quick. I liked the heavy shadows made by the spot light.

Back in January, when I decided to embark on some kind of printing plan, this was, ambitiously, the first thing I attempted to print. I used my tiny screen, bought from the art shop, meant for printing on fabrics, but I didn’t know this at the time. I was confused about that ink/paint I was supposed to use. I bought what seemed intuitive and just gave it a go.

The stencils, made out of acetate, were well planned and cut but the paint dried on the screen, and on the paper had a strange bubbly effect. It didn’t work.

Yesterday, at the print studios I gave it another go.

With the help of photo emulsion there was no need to cut complicated stencils. I could have worked straight off of a photocopy, but I decided to give another technique a go. True-Grain.
Once you’ve coated your screen with photo emulsion (as shown here) you simply draw or trace your image onto the True-Grain, which is like a slightly textured acetate, using marker pens. With my St Pauls picture, I originally planned to have the shading a slightly lighter colour than the outline so I made two different copies on separate pieces of True-Grain, one with only shade and one with only outline.

Once this is done and the screen is dry, you can expose your screen and burn the image onto it. Watching a video here of a homemade exposure unit. Basically you place the True-Gain with your image on it, on top of the screen. You then shine string lights onto the screen. The marker pen lines stop the light from reaching the screen. Where the light does hit, the emulsion is fixed to the screen. Under the marker pen, that emulsion will just rinse off with cold water leaving a perfect stencil.

And so, after lots of fiddley work lining up the different parts, I succeeded in printing St Pauls. There are 12 for sale. They will be up in my online shop shortly, or you can send me an email to fools.prints@yahoo.co.uk to get your hands on one for just £2.50!

Have your cake and eat it

New cards available now!

So, here are the highly anticipated new cards. Better quality, better design, same great price…thats what I call having your cake and eating it!

At the moment there’s only 48 so get in quick and I’ll get to work on the next lot.

You can get yours by emailing fools.prints@yahoo.co.uk or through my online shop

Also available now…

Note cards inspired by London’s South Bank in summer. This design is taken from a sketch I did whilst gazing up at those drinking at the Royal Festival Hall Balcony Bar.

Email fools.prints@yahoo.co.uk or go to my online shop to get yours.

All cards £2.50 each. If you want to buy several let me know and you can have 5 for £10 mix and match.

I’m back in the print workshop on Saturday morning so look out for more exciting things very very soon!

On a parting note, big thanks to South Banks’ own Charlie Chaplin. Little does he know how much his act has inspired me. Here’s a post card he gave me last time I was there. Good luck where ever you are heading to next!

Thanks to Kerrie Jane Stritton

I first saw this picture of Kerrie’s work in Angus Hyland’s ‘The Picture Book- Compemporary Illustration’.

I tried to find out more about Kerrie but there was a distinct lack of information. I found lots of other people who had links to her work, but all who seem to know no more than me.

I was pleased to have Kerrie comment on my wesite a few months ago. From her comment I made my way to her website. Lots more beautiful things. I was also pleased to find out that Kerrie had been Artist in Residence of Newham Council, creating hundreds of murals with children from the area.

I bought a copy of Crowded Skies. Thanks Kerrie for all of the kind and beautiful additions that came with the book and thank you very much for the free upgrade! I was so excited when it came throught the post.

I’ve been living in East London for nearly 2 years now and I love Crowded Skies. Maybe I’ll fly to the sea too.

Anyway, I am excited about Kerrie’s work and I wanted to say thanks for the book.

How to become a recognised portrait artist without trying

This is the story of how I went from drawing a dead tree to being a local portrait celebrity within one afternoon…

It was the hight of summer ’09. Working in a Sixth Form College meant I was mostly unemployed over the summer months. I lived just up the road from Victoria Park at the time and spent no where near enough time there.

According to friends I know who love East End history, Victoria Park was the first park space in London for working people. During the Second World War trenches were dug there for those who didn’t have shelters to hide from the falling bombs. Its really beautiful.

So I decided to go there to draw. I’ve never been too good at drawing trees and there, in the middle of all of the lush green of summer, was one tree with no leaves. Just a beautful bare skeleton. I went with my sketchbook; an old nature book with pages painted nearly blank (no intinidating whiteness of paper to over come), and my trusty black biro. I LOVE biros for drawing. I used to get really hung up about getting everything correct and perfect. Got myself into the habbit of using a biro to force myself to let go. Just get it on the paper. No going back. 

So there I was, pen in hand, sketching away. All of the little branches stretching towards the sun, but unable to muster the energy for leaves.

There were loads of people in the park. It was the school holidays so there were loads of kids around. There was a group of 10-ish year olds playing football by me. Their ball came my way a few times and I threw it back. Then they got interested in what I was doing. “Are you an artist?” They asked. “Nar I just like practicing to draw” I replied. “Lets have a look” they asked. So they flicked through my book. “Wow, you’re like a lady Banksy” they said without any sarcasm. Hahaha Lady Banksy! They asked me to draw them. I couldn’t while they were playing football. So they decided to sit with me and I drew each of their portraits one by one. There were 5 of them and they wouldn’t sit for long. I managed to get pretty good likenesses in a messy, quick biro kinda way. One of their parents came over and she sat with us too.

As I finished all the drawings they asked me to sign them, in case I got famous. They all took their portraits home, please to have met an artist in the park (hahaha).

I saw them now and again over the following few months and they’d always say “look there’s the art lady!”

So there you go. If you want to become a recognised portrait artist without trying, go and draw in a public place where there are children around. Chat to people and just offer. The next thing you know you’ll be a local celebrity, the next best thing since Banksy!

Brilliant

Drawing rush hour

 I love drawing people but its not a very easy thing to do. It takes lots of practice. As well as persuading my housemates to let me draw them naked, I’d often go to Kings Cross Station at rush hour. You might think rush hour would be a terrible time to draw people, but what with the patchey reliability of of London’s transport system, there’s loads of people standing around waiting for their train.

I’d go to Kings Cross and I’d sit under the massive departure board. People strike some brilliant poses, with the heads angled to the sky, waiting for updates on the board. No one stays still for long. Just long enough to capture a shape, an expression, and then they’re gone. Thats why it’s a great place to go to practice. No time to get hung up on perfectionism. Just give it a go. You might get half way through a good one, then the next time you look up they’ve completely vanished. And no one ever notices that you’re drawing them.

…Well that’s what I always thought.

One cold evening there I was sitting on the floor at Kings Cross underneath the big departure board. I’d been there about half hour already. I’d got a couple of sketches done. This is one of them. Before I could finish it someone moved into my eye line so I couldn’t see my subject ‘man with bag’. That’s not unusual. I didn’t think anything of it. I moved on to another person who was striking a good pose. I’d hardly got anything down before they were blocked from my view too. It was the same guy blocking my view as before! As I looked at him we cought each others eye before he looked back at the departure board a little bit too quickly to have been casual. Hmmm. I started drawing someone else and sure enough, after not too long, he moved into my eyeline again and snapped his gaze upwards when I finally looked up to see him there. Maybe it was just coincidence. Maybe I’m just a little paranoid. More likely, though, he was bored. He’d been there as long as I had waiting for his train. We played this game a while longer. And then I looked up and he too was gone.

Drawing in public is fun!