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By Kate, 21 February 2010 5:29 pm

How I managed to get all the way through WAC without ever taking a studio art course completely baffles me, especially considering I very nearly went to art school. But instead, I ended up at a liberal arts school, became consumed by theatre and publications, and practically forgot about the fact that a studio course was even an option til it was too late.

It’s not like I didn’t do anything arty in college. Designing, building, and painting sets plus laying out all kind of campus publications fed my need for creativity. I even got to squeeze in Dr McColl’s Art History 101 class when I was a senior (it was pretty much a freshman class), and that made me wish I had started a bit earlier.

In any case, my art education now continues through my job, where I see priceless works of art on a daily basis and have access to curators who would probably be happy to talk my ear off about any particular painting in a period they specialise in, so I am not deprived. And perhaps it makes sense then that the beginning of that job coincided with me finally taking a studio class. At the end of last year, I finally did what I’d been meaning to do since I graduated college. I took a studio course. I learned how to screenprint at Edinburgh Printmakers. And it was awesome!

Since then, I’ve been taking advantage of the free 6 month associate membership to the workshop I got for taking the course. I’ve been going in pretty much every week, bumbling along trying to get better at printing. Nothing I’ve printed yet is terribly high quality, but I can see myself improving in little ways, which is satisfying. I think I’ll definitely be joining with a full membership in April so that I can continue making stuff. A lot of the other members print amazing art, but I’m really more interested in craft and making practical things like stationery and gifts for people. I like to keep it simple. But if I reach the point that I can support some kind of etsy shop or sell my stuff in the Edinburgh Printmakers gallery shop, I will not be complaining. The workshop also offers other types of printmaking like lithography and block printing, so I may try out some of that stuff once I have a member discount.

In any case, here are some of my first attempts at art in too long a time.

I printed this artichoke in class, so it’s the first thing I did. Since it was supervised, I think the print quality is actually better than some of the stuff I’ve done on my own, but that’s to be expected I guess.

I made about 50 of these snowflake cards and envelopes in a marathon session the Saturday before I flew to the states for Christmas. They made good presents for a few people.

For the first proper print I did on my own, I wanted to give myself some kind of art project-like assignment, so I decided to do something with maps. This is called ‘The Street Where I Live’ and it’s basically a google map of every place I’ve ever lived (at the same zoom level) twisted around and strung together so that the red line covers every street I’ve ever lived on. The aim was for me to be able to recognise each place by the surrounding streets and features, and I sort of can in most places. I may try this again sometime though, because it’s not printed very well at all. There are all sorts of lines and spatters and the ink hasn’t stayed put in some places. I don’t mind too much though. It kind of makes it look like scratched film or something.

Finally, to recover from all the screwups I had with the map, I did this really simple elephant print. Still not printed perfectly, but I like it anyway.

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By Kate, 6 July 2009 8:14 pm

For hands-free luggin' around.

Although I tend to feel like I’m being too lazy all the time, I’ve got a few things that I’ve finished recently, and some other things I’ve started.

The first project is top secret for now, so I can’t post pictures for a few months, but I tried a new skill and did not suck at it, so I’m proud of myself.

Project 2, a yoga mat bag. I got tired of carrying my mat in my hand after one class. I have to bring it to work with me and then bring it most of the way back towards home before I even get to class, so that’s 3 miles before I even unroll it. I made use of some scrap IKEA fabric I had from my sister’s christmas present and whipped this up in about 3 hours. I’m pretty happy with it. The bottom was sort of fiddly, and the stitiching on the top of the strap is kind of crap, but overall, a good result.

Third on the list is a pair of pajama pants, which I don’t actually have a picture of. I’m not too big a fan of the waist, mostly because it relies solely on a drawstring rather than a drawstring plus elastic, but they’ve got super wide legs, and since I made them myself, I was able to make them long enough for my legs, so they’re cozy. The fabric is maroon cotton with little cartoon elephants, giraffes, lions, pineapples, and palm trees. Awesome!

nomnomnom

Next! So I make a lot of cake. I get used to having it around. When it’s not, I can get a little stroppy. Because dammit, I like cake! I don’t want a chocolate bar, I don’t want a lollypop, I might want a cookie depending on what it is, but really, I just want some cake. So I raided my cabinets and my recipe books and decided to make chocolate cupcakes with some raspberries on the top. (I had frozen ones. If I had fresh ones, I would have just eaten them on their own. Scottish raspberries in season are THE BEST IN THE WORLD.) I used Rachel Allen’s chocolate cake recipe for the first time. It’s all right, but it would probably do better with frosting instead of raspberries. For the record, every other cake I’ve made from her book, Bake, so far has been absolutely freaking incredible, so it’s a good book to have. Anyway, that put some cake in my house, and by some miracle, it’s still not gone. Mission accomplished.

I’ve also started a few longer-term things. The first being a batch of homebrewed ginger beer. Scott’s been doing a lot of beer with mixed success rates, but I hadn’t tried anything myself yet. Then I saw our homebrew shop had a ginger beer kit from Coopers, so I jumped on it. It was even easier to brew than a beer kit. I decided it had to be refrigerated for the best result, so this was our first foray into bottling (we’ve just kegged everything else). It seems to have gone well. It tasted pretty good before it went into the bottles, and now we just have to wait 3 weeks til it’s done conditioning. It’s supposed to be about 3.5%ABV, so I’ m looking forward to having properly alcoholic ginger beer around whenever I want it. We’ve got 40 pints of it. I think it will last a while. I might even try making a cake with it.

Soon, there shall be tomatoes.

Last on the list are some tomato plants I started about 3 weeks ago. It was a little late in the season, but they’re coming along nicely. I need to put them in bigger pots soon and hope they do well enough in the window to give me a bunch of tasty tomatoes in a month or two.