A big thank you to Swansea Astronomical Society for inviting me to talk on Astronomical Art on Thursday.

Three sculptures went up to the Iona House Gallery as part of the Art in Woodstock festival.

I recently presented on my practice at Chapter Arts Center as part of Pecha Kucha. These presentations consist of 20 slides at a strict 20 second time limit each.

A big thanks to all those who attended the private view and a special thank you to the members of Tiverton Astronomical Society that made the trip up.

I was pleased to be invited to give a talk on Astronomical Art to Tiverton Astronomical Society today. My talk explained my ideas behind my art work and I brought in other artists that have responded to the cosmos and the night sky. These included A Calder, C Jenks and V Gogh. 

Today I have starting learning a new printing technique, block printing with Wood Block, Lino and sign makers plastic. Each gives a different looking print.

I am working from a Jupiter drawing.

Wood Block

Sign makers plastic

I will be showing a number of my prints at the exhibition 'Loan Art' at Llantrisant Library from 31st Aug 2010. Artist Gayle Rogers will be showing original drawings and reproduction prints.

Today I have been experimenting with different Cyanotype techniques. Top left is stained with coffee giving a darker hue. Top right was exposed by sunlight, took about an hour. Bottom left is a normal cyanotype exposed with UV light. Bottom right was bleached and stained with tea.  

I am now learning the Cyanotype printing process using the various materials I have managed to find, these included old astronomical text, observational drawing's a few lenses, feathers and net like materials.    

This is a photographic printing technique using chemicals that give the exposed surface a blue (Cyan) colour

Astronomical diagram printed onto acetate with a lense placed in the center

This print is composed from a drawing I made of Jupiter at 150 times magnification with an astronomical chart taken from an old text book

Moon like image made using textured paper and a lense  

Milky way created by scrunched netting on top of a printed star chart

Moon image taken with a webcam through the telescope combined with astronomical text

This   print of jupiter   is taken from   a drawing   I   did at the telescope   with 150 times magnification.

The same print with gold and blue ink. I really like the halo around the sphere which was unintentional.

I am working on a range of prints that reveal the unusual shapes of the constellations - a continuation of my relief work . Each has a boundary so they all fit together like a jigsaw, this gives them a lovely abstract border. I think these will work well as embosses.

Cancer

My first attempt at Chine colle, a process where coloured paper is applied to the print. The yellow tissue paper is placed onto the inked plate with a glued face up so it sticks to the paper being printed. The plate represents the constellation Cancer (mine).

The next print used a mix of two colours.

Now working with a new moon image. This has been built up using texture paste and paper.  Quite happy with the results but struggling to get a consistent tone with each edition. This is probably not helped by the fact I used a dark coloured plate.

A pic of Swansea Print Workshop (SPW) showing some of the presses and equipment.

One of my first collagraph test plates, this one for a Milkyway inspired image. The plate lasted just two prints! Problem was I used PVA for the smooth middle shape, which is too soft to take the pressure of the press.

The two prints. The front one is an improvement having more tonal variation, I'm getting used to inking up.