What......is that a painting!!

I'm posting an image of a work on a theme that has fascinated me for years now. Living in South London as I do there is the ever present sight of aeroplanes passing over on their way to land at Heathrow Airport. Almost one per minute in fact Far from disliking them they have worked their way into my psyche and I have become slightly obsessed with them and eventually this is becoming apparent in some of my artwork. This is the first painting of mine I've put on this blog. I've been painting more lately hence the lack of recent posts of etchings. No fear though more work is in the pipeline.

New and Old

One of the techniques I love to use most of all in printing is something called drypoint. This is the simplest of all ways of making a plate from which multiple images can be printed. It is simple because all it involves is scratching an appropriately soft material such as a piece of aluminium or perspex. The scratch and burr hold ink to give a particularly rich line. This is my preferred medium for sponateous work like life drawing but I have lately been using it for more composed imagined scenes such as one I'll post later today as soon as I have scanned it. Plates made in this way are rather delicate and wear out very quickly and are limited to small editions. The life drawing here is an old drypoint print and the other image is my very latest work.