But I feel as if I’m making some progress, and I’ve realised that I haven’t posted about it yet – I’ve been so caught up in it.

I took 3 70cm x 70cm canvases I had knocking around from a previous project several years ago. I did some automatic drawing on both of then using a fine liner pen, some charcoal and pastel. This step feels important as it has been my constant over the last two years.

On 2 of the canvases I used acrylic paint and soap solution to experiment with bubbles and also dropping the solution and blowing using a straw.

I love how you can see things in the shapes:

A goldfish and a skull:

I then applied glazes of oil colour, wiping back in some areas to keep some light.

I then applied a Prussian blue glaze over the entire canvas and wiped back:

I decided that I wanted to put the same shape on all of the canvases, the third being left blank apart from the shape which I’d print on it. I’d previously decided against the shape I’d used before, but then changed my mind. I like the shape and I’m going to use it as a repeating motif. So I scaled it up to A2 size and cut the lino this time using more organic lines rather than the straight lines I used previously.

I then applied some small lino prints to the red and blue canvas. I tried on the orange and blue canvas but it didn’t work so I wiped my trial prints off.

I then decided on the order of the canvases working out how the shapes might be arranged. I liked the idea of the middle canvas being quite limited but perhaps overlaying a piece of paper pulp lace as it’s reminiscent of cellular structure or membrane. I’m planning on stitching the outline of the third shape which is why I quite like that the canvas has quite a bit going on in it.

This morning I printed the first shape using the border from the lino as a stencil and using gold oil based printing ink and a sponge.

The next step is to make some new paper pulp lace as I’ve now got some konnyaku powder which should help the flow through the syringe and also make the paper stronger and more flexible. I’ll then print the shape on the second canvas once the gold ink is dry and stitch the outline on the last one.