Artyfarty day

Hello. It's been all about art today. My friend Carol from the Crafty Club picked me up and we went to the Artists Studios Open Day at The Ropewalk Gallery. I have been visiting this event for a few years now, it's held over two weekends every September. I always come away fully enthused with my arty batteries recharged and ready to start dabbling. 

It was great to have Carol accompany me on this, I usually walk around by myself, but having a friend means we can bounce ideas off each other. She is of similar ilk to me, liking most things arty, and keen to find out about design and techniques. We learnt quite a lot today, and met some fantastically friendly people who were happy to share their particular art experience. I took a few snaps.

Sitting at his computer busy working is Reginald Swinney. He is a graphics illustrator and designs book covers, leaflets, event programmes, greetings cards, and anything else customers ask for. He has a blog which catalogues some of  his designs back to 2010. 

I had a nice chat with Keith Woodcock, and was very impressed with his amazing paintings, his speciality being aviation and automobiles. You must go to his web site and view his stunning artwork. They capture the emotions of history in the making far better than photographs can.

And here is my favoutite artist, Michael Scrimshaw and his lovely wife Helen. He has many talents, painting a large mural on a brick wall, customizing cars and bikes with airbrushing images, working with large scale sculptures, and inventing new uses for scrap. Michael has a web site but the links from his home page don't work. There are tons of pictures on his facebook page, scroll down a long way to see his latest sculpture which is a lion installed at a school in Grimsby. There are step by step photo's of how he constructed it. I'm sure he won't mind if I copy one here.

The print room was an interesting place. One lady kindly explained how she was making plates ready for printing, then demonstrated how it all works and the results.

Wendy Chan works in felting and patchwork.

Sinclair Ashman is a print maker, he has an exhibition at the Ropewalk, and these are some of the things he uses to make the plates.

I've found a video of him at work in the print room where we were this afternoon.



It was a smashing day out, we seemed to have been there for hours talking to people. Tesco next door  provided us with a snack for lunch. Although there is a very popular cafe on site, it was too busy and we didn't want to sit ages waiting to get served. Luckily Tesco had two chairs near the checkouts so we sat there and people watched while we scoffed. I don't think the chairs are meant for that but we didn't care.

Right now I have a ginger cat who wants some attention and I am finding it difficult to use the keyboard with his face six inches from my hands. I'll sign off and say Tatty byes and Toodle pip
Ilona