Category: Hybrid Printmaking

#1263 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Serendipity, Photographs, art, Words, Plymouth Sound, Plymouth, Stonehouse, Hybrid PrintmakingLeave a comment

Does every picture tell a story?

I think most do.

This one tells of the late summer clear up. All family guests have moved on to different holiday destinations and our home has eased back from peak occupation. The crocs belonging to three small girls are gathered in a bucket by the back door while the girls themselves are away on different holiday adventures.

Using a similar colour scheme I am trying to tell the story of a set of swimming steps that are much quieter this week now the heatwave has moved on.

I am at heart a story teller either with words or pictures.

A regular blog reader, who is familiar with these steps, said yesterday that I had made them look very posh. That was not the intention, but I agree. They may have been posh once upon a time but shabby shic is a better description now. Most of the time they are entirely tolerable and are regularly washed by incoming very high tides.

At night they can be a gathering place for  smokers of weed and men who like to do a wee. Not so posh then. Not so great as a swim destination either. Not  so great a picture.

But I don’t need to tell that story about these steps.

Years ago a little pair of discarded crocs by the back door of the actual Old Mortuary used to break my heart.   A small person and her family  had left us to live abroad. That would not have made a great story or a great picture.

3 pairs of crocs in a bucket is a much better story.

However in the interests of story telling I also wanted to show the earlier set of steps at the peak of the August heatwave. I am not interested in the crowds of people who used these steps recently just the steps as a metaphor for extreme atmospheric and radiated heat. Just too much heat.

The heat blistered out of the rocks at night. And the sea languidly lapping the steps, warmer than we have ever known. Not quite cooling enough perhaps. Oleaginous even.

A different colour scheme. A completely different story.

#1346 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn abstract photography, art, Footling About, Hybrid Printmaking, learning, Meddled Photography X Watercolour, Medical imaging, Serendipity1 Comment

Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?

As a lifelong image maker the outdated technology I miss the most is the magic and alchemy of a photographic or radiographic darkroom. The basic skills of wet processing and later automated processing, that are enhanced by the knowledge and experience of knowing how to manipulate negative and positive images to create the best possible outcome. 

So many mental filing cabinets of know how have been stored in my brain gathering dust since the dawn of digital imaging. Until a February in Penzance when I had a lightbulb moment and decided to start using some of my old analogue knowledge alongside the digital knowledge of contemporary image making.

I am a time-hopping digital immigrant. Using skills taught to me by people called Sheila and Ron in the 70’s ,an era when a dark room technician could turn a disaster into an acceptable picture by clever thinking and the use of tricks and accuracy to make an image better.

This is the first successfully manipulated image created by overlaying three separate digital photographs to create one picture.

The feet below are my most recent  meddled image.

The others are just some of the picture journey. The acceptable part of the journey. Not the many many images that have ended up in the digital bin

#1343 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Devils Point, Firestone Bay, Hybrid PrintmakingLeave a comment

My day was hijacked , first by a sound then an image and then later again by another image that just nagged away at me until I had sketched,painted and photographed it into existence. Until I was done.

Lola and I were out walking early this morning , almost from the start we were followed by the slightly worrisome and slightly exciting sound of someone hurrying with a suitcase on wheels. At one point we were overtaken by a woman who had laden herself with everything she would need for a day on the beach. She was a woman on a mission. As she sped past me I grabbed a quick photo which I have altered to anonymise . There was no beach, we were both walking at exactly high tide. She was way ahead of us and as I looked over the wall she was patiently waiting for some beach to appear. By the time we passed again, on our way back, she had claimed her spot on a tiny ribbon of wet pebbles.

She had unloaded and set up a one woman encampment. Sun lounger, parasols, cooler box and books. She was oiled up like a sausage on a barbeque . She was not alone, the thin strip of pebbles had grown and she had neighbours, but none who had hauled quite so much stuff.  When I got home I decided to donate her my empty beach of yesterday.

It was the least I could do. I had an interesting afternoon sketching her arriving on an empty beach then watercoloured and did a pen and ink sketch before sticking them all together digitally.

The Early Firestoner ©theoldmortuary

Sometimes I just have to get an image out of my system. I hope she had a great day, she really deserved it.

#1530 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Hybrid Printmaking, Paintings, workLeave a comment
Friday Work Desk

Friday was always going to be a full day of creating images.  There was a fair amount of digital manipulation to create some images of the previous evenings skinny dip and an afternoon of watercolour and ink work, to depict the wind which is always, to  my frustration, the hidden element in all art work. Painting wind is a little project I return to now and again.

©theoldmortuary Smeaton’s Tower

In the future I would quite like to add a wind cherub to my wind paintings, those fat cheeked toddlers who appear on the sides of old maps.

Wind cherubs are quite a niche interest, I suspect our local library will not rise to that particular subject in their reference section.

So currently my wind paintings are sans windy cherubs.

Firestone Bay with a South West Wind, no cherub

The day of working in the studio was missing something else too.

A chocolate digestive at work

The chocolate digestive did not work. What my creative juices required was a piece of fruit cake. Not a rich winter version but a pale sort of fruitcake. Often sold by the slice in plastic wrappers at the lower end of the cafe industry. There should always be a cherry in every slice.

Not expecting to appear in public I was wearing an old sundress, no bra and my gardening crocs. A quick trip to Lidl might just provide me with the cake I desired  without meeting anyone I know.

This is where the day took a lovely and awkward turn. I blame the blog

Lidl had no cheap fruit cake. I did not meet anyone I know. But I did meet someone I don’t know who reads the blog. A friend of a friend etc. We could have talked about the blog but she really kindly, said that she saw me about often and admired my style. She didn’t mean my writing style. How thoughtful and delightful. We chatted briefly and I did not move from the back of my car. Not a single part of the day’s outfit was visible to her. No illusions shattered and no fruit cake.

Friday completed

#1511 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Hybrid Printmaking, Serendipity2 Comments
©theoldmortuary

What is one way you have grown this year?

Creatively I have grown like a weed. I chose to step away from exhibiting at formal art exhibitions for a year and just let art and photography grow in their own way.

The kite surfers at St Michaels Mount were the first sign that something was  up . Goodness knows why I had never considered that the skills, both analogue and digital that I used in Medical Imaging could be transferred to photography and art.

The epiphany occurred on Mounts Bay beach during a cold winter weekend in January 2025. I could get mediocre photographs of a great location and some kite surfers but nothing particularly Zingy. Until I tried sticking three photos together and slightly altering their angles and magnification.

18 months in and I happily stick anything that I have photographed or painted together, to create an image which pleases me. Along the way I have used screen printing tricks like deregistering and sometimes registering, different renditions of the exact same subject. Altering perspectives, angles, magnifications and colours. Anything goes really. No guarantee of success, the failure rate is high, but when the serendipity goddess is in a good mood then anything can happen.

Like all experimental creative processes there are more duds than there are successes. But there is always some learning lurking even in the duddiest of duds.

Sometimes I flip the process and paint one of my amalgamated images as an original painting.

Yesterday’s blog featured one of my hybrid images that I was always planning to paint.

#1510 theoldmortuary ponders.

There was more flipping, flipping because the image was of a small yacht haven on the Peloponnese in Greece. Just a tiny jetty that offered overnight, safe mooring just off a shingle beach.  Double flipping because my digital image was created using three different photographs, superimposed, simplified and then overlayed  on a hand painted watercolour background.

Then flipped colour wise because everyone knows that all images of boats in Greece should be represented in shades of blue, green and turquoise. But I wanted to represent the warmth of the evening and the moment.

Painting this image yesterday I abstracted it a little further.

I also had a go at doing a digital deregistered double image. A pencil sketch overlayed on top of the watercolour.

Just like growing weeds, I never quite know what will pop up next .

Just like weeds quite a lot of these ideas end up in the bin.

One person’s weed however can be someone else’s flower.

#1257 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Hybrid Printmaking, Meddled Photography X Watercolour3 Comments
Sunday Morning with a European Crab Apple

Not exactly four seasons in one day but almost. A very chilly start in Plymouth. Followed by a couple of hours of basking below The Hoe, in bright sunlight with too much caffeine, the right amount of nattering and laughter. Watching boats near the Lido.

WIP ©theoldmortuary
Tinside Lido, awaiting the summer, still wrapped in builders materials and grubby. © theoldmortuary

Before returning to our yard to work off the caffeine in a yard that has declared Spring very much here with buds and blooms and sharp shadows.

Before rain chased us indoors. Then off to the Tennis Club to enjoy the views and rehearsals for Sri Lankan New Year. Coats were definately needed.  But worse was to come…

Woolly hats were needed for the evening dog walk. April. What are you doing to us

#1255 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Hybrid Printmaking, Serendipity1 Comment
WIP Firestone Bay, Stonehouse.

12 Days of Sunshine. Spring has not been this good since the first Covid lockdown of 2020. A lot of water has flowed since those days of uncertainty and impending sadness. If I could pick one good thing, one great thing actually, of the whole Covid debacle. It would be the formation of ‘Bobbers’ our cold water, sea swimming clan of interconnected humans. Not a week passes without a chilly dip in Firestone Bay.

The tide and the currents were not our friends yesterday, but the Royal Navy ship HMS Sutherland, the Navy’s fastest ship, cut through our bay in a way that we could not.

WIP H.M.S Surherland

The thing that keeps us safe from peril in this sea is the one thing that I have yet to add to these two pictures. And yet it is the marker of achievement for a ‘good’ bob.

Getting to the first buoy. One of three that string the boundary of our swimming zone. We do our thing on the coastal side of the buoys and the Navy, and all other nautical traffic, stay on the island side of the buoys.

The buoy needs painting in a way that it will be obvious in these two pictures. A tiny project for today. But for now I just stuck the two buoyless pictures together. It works for me

W.I.P Firestone Bay, still no buoy.

P.S. Buoy added

#1240 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Devon, dog walks, Hybrid Printmaking, Serendipity1 Comment
The Bents, Bantham ©theoldmortuary

Yesterday was the perfect Spring Day so we set off to a perfect beach for a long meandering dog walk. The beach and surrounding estate were sold over winter.

Sold for an undisclosed sum. The asking price was £30 million

It is alleged that the previous owner had wanted to turn the area into a millionaires play ground. If that is true,that would have been rather sad. Bantham is a spectacular place enjoyed inhabited and visited by regular humans since the Bronze Age.

What makes you laugh?

Now it has to be said that I laugh at most normal things, but the idea of a natural paradise being turned into an unnatural paradise also seems to be so laughable that I can quite see why local people protested with enough vigor to stop such a scheme. I hope the new owners don’t give them cause to protest again. For now all seems peaceful. We paid our £5 parking fee, had the beach mostly to ourselves and the dogs made themselves giddy and exhausted with play and paddling.

I took some deliberately bad photographs to reprocess into Hybrid images and was once again surprised and  puzzled by my results. Just two of my chosen images worked. Jenkins Boathouse turned out pleasingly vibrant.

Jenkins Boathouse ©theoldmortuary

And The Bents, or sand dunes worked out as peacefully mysterious as I planned, but I am unsure if the blue sky or the pink is better.

So I stuck them together and got an entirely different feel.I am learning to enjoy the serendipity of bad photography.

#1228 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Hybrid PrintmakingLeave a comment

Whatever blog was going to flow today has been bounced by a fellow artist sending me this page from a local newspaper. Not exactly headline stuff but page 5 in a local newspaper is still page 5 in old media. For some reason the free newspaper rarely makes it through my letterbox. There was every chance I would miss my moment as yesterday’s news.

In other news we spent a pleasant hour crafting with our two year old grandaughter in the local museum and art gallery.

I did all the right things assembling materials and sharpening pencils but was not allowed near any of her creative space and could only use the glue stick under her supervision and tear paper to make a picture. Which she needed to finesse before it was done.

Thank goodness for Hybrid Printmaking, which allowed me to sail abstractly into the sunset.

#1227 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Hybrid Printmaking, Serendipity1 Comment

How would you rate your confidence level?

I believe my confidence levels are at about the right place. But I would say that wouldn’t I?

Like many people I am a little in awe of hugely confident people but I am wise enough to know that massive confidence in others is built on foundations that are often less than desirable or wealth and status.

I am a lover of moderate confidence x compassion and interest in alternate ways of doing things. With a specific ratio of 35:65

35 being confidence and 65 being all the other elements of thinking, including doubt.

Clearly I sit comfortably on this ratio in my own opinion. It doesn’t mean a 65% lack of confidence. More like 65% opportunity to learn new things, see a different point of view or be flexible.

These images are 35% of my creative output of the last 2 months. The other 65% will never see the light of day but that 65% made these what they are. Less is more in confidence and creativity.