Michael Gage

While I try to work out what to next with the linocut that's in progress, here's another of the small paintings from the Ashdown Forest series.



7 October, 2.45pm. Autumn sun on dry bracken, fire gold.
Acrylic on canvas, 15 x 15 cm.

Second stage of the new print: a green-to-grey-to-green gradient over the top of the first layer. The block is only 10cm square, so it took some careful thought to get the gradient to align correctly every time.

Another of the small paintings from the Ashdown Forest landscape series.



10 December, 3pm. Winter's afternoon quickly turns to evening.
Acrylic on canvas, 15 x 15 cm.

I've had to put the experiments with solarplate etching to one side for a while. It's only four weeks to the next exhibition, so it's time for lots of hard work on what I know best.

Here's the first stage of a new linocut, a cobalt blue to burnt sienna gradient, both with lots of white added, to make sure it's light enough. Or is it too light? Or too brown? Or the wrong blue?

Another experiment with what can be done with solarplate (photopolymer) etching. This time, I started with a photograph of one of my recent paintings of the Ashdown Forest landscape...



...converted it to black and white, and then etched it on the solarplate.




I like this. The solarplate has picked up all the brushwork and even the weave of the canvas. (Click the picture for a bigger version.) These are much clearer in this etching than they are in the original painting, where the colour grabs the attention. The result has got the quality of a traditional, pure aquatint plate.

I printed the plate again in dark blue.




I like this. I like this a lot.

3 April, 11am. In the distance, yes, the first sight of gorse.



Acrylic on canvas, 15 x 15cm.

Inspired by how well the solarplate etching technique has reproduced my pen and ink drawings, I tried it with one of my pencil drawings.

This is the original drawing:


I strengthened the contrast and added some flat tone by using Photoshop.


And then etched this version onto the photopolymer plate.


This version is printed in dark blue (ultramarine plus a bit of black), so the contrast isn't quite as strong as it could be if I'd printed it in black; but nonetheless, it's very interesting to see how much detail and line quality has been carried over from the orginal drawing to the print.

More to come...

Start of a new series of the Ashdown Forest landscapes. I'm trying to push harder to the boundary between naturalism and abstraction. This series is on smaller size of canvas, to see how much information can be packed into the smaller space.



9 January, 1.15pm. Searching for colour in the depths of winter, and finding it everywhere.
Acrylic on canvas, 15 x 15 cm.

For my next solarplate etching, I've enlarged my drawings before processing them onto the plate. (In the previous etching, the drawings were slightly reduced.)


The original drawings were about 6 x 4 inches. On the plate, they are about 8 x 5.5 inches (A5). I etched them onto a single A4 plate, and then printed it.

Then I cut the plate, and printed them separately.







Again, it's exciting to see how well the solarplate picks up every mark and nuance of the drawn line and watercolour washes, particularly at this larger size.

You can see the original drawings here and here.