Photos of Skylines Exhibition

Cromarty collagraphs - as seen in recent Skylines Exhibition, Marchmont Gallery, Edinburgh.

Skylines Exhibition

Oops!  Forgot to blog about this earlier with Christmas and all that - but you can still catch it for a week or two more.  Marchmont Gallery kindly invited me to include my Cromarty collagraph prints in their most recent exhibition entitled Skylines.  Other artists featured in this group exhibition include Gill Tyson and John V Gardner, so I was very pleased to be invited as well!  Thank you Marchmont Gallery!

Autumnal Illustration

Finally got around to posting the illustration I made after our outing to The Meadows in Edinburgh, as detailed in my previous post Autumnal Inspiration.  I've really enjoyed getting back into ink and watercolour drawing, which I used lots in my book Behind the Scenes: Creating Theatre for the Very Young.  The drawing is for one of several designs for a small commission I'm working on: the client wanted an image that would communicate a sense of freedom, and was keen on the childlike urge to keep up fallen leaves .

Autumnal Inspiration

Sorry to the leaf-hooverers!  They'd tidied them all up!

Ola tries out a new leaf-kicking move...

Can't believe it's over a month since I posted on here!  Here are some photos of Giorgos and Ola who kindly agreed to help me get some inspiration for an illustration by running about kicking up leaves on a very autumnal Saturday in The Meadows, Edinburgh!  It was a chilly day, so we retreated to Peter's Yard afterwards to warm up with cakes, scones, coffee and peppermint tea!  Thanks very much Ola & Giorgos.  I'll post the resulting drawing next!

More Scots Fiddle Festival drawings

I haven't blogged for ages where does the time go?  Been spending quite a lot of time going through location drawings to develop some prints/publications from them, and here are few more from my 'mini-drawing residency' at Scots Fiddle Festival last year.  I'm hoping to make a series of prints or a small book of prints developed from these.  More info about the drawings are did and the musicians are to be found at http://hannahryeillustration.blogspot.com/2011/03/fiddle-festival-drawings.html.

Illustration Friday: Gesture

My offering for this week's Illustration Friday theme, gesture, features a stage actress rehearsing a performance for very young children.  This week's theme made me think about the movement and immediacy of live theatre performers, and how best to capture that spontaneity in a single image.  I made the drawing in situ, sitting on the floor with my 'mobile' drawing kit spread out in front of me.  By the time I drew this, I was completely absorbed in the process that the performers were going through, and had watched the actress repeating this routine several times over.  I used ink, watercolour and a very small amount of Photoshop afterwards, just to clean up the image once I had scanned it.

Here are some photos of the actresses at work in their humble rehearsal room at Leith Community Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland:

Turquoise Bay

Marchmont Gallery are now stocking a screen-print of mine: Turquoise Bay.  The print is a section taken from this concertina book, which illustrates a traditional sea shanty & folk song Fiddler's Green.  Here's a wee excerpt:

As I went a walking one evening so rare

To view the still waters and taste the salt air

I heard an old fisherman singing this song

Sayin', "Take me away boys, my time is not long.

Chorus:

Wrap me up in me oil skins and blankets

No more on the docks I'll be seen

Just tell me old shipmates, I'm takin' a trip mates

And I'll see you someday on fiddler's green."

...I don't need a harp nor a halo not me

Just give me a breeze and a good rollin' sea

I'll play me old squeeze box as we sail along

And the wind in the riggin' will sing me this song.

Print features in fundraising Art Sale for Borneo & Cambodia

This digital archival print, based on a drawing I made of Nigg Long Pier in Cromarty, will feature in a fundraising art sale this weekend (Sat 28/Sun 29 May).  I made the drawing during a brilliant residency last year in October.  See my Cromarty pages for more info on my residency.  The art sale takes place in the downstairs wing of The Stables in Cromarty, as part of Cromarty Arts Trust's arts & crafts weekend Wooden It Be Nice.  The art sale will help raise funds for a local Cromarty resident, Izzy Thomson, to volunteer in Borneo and Cambodia.  It features some leading Highland-based artists including Rosie Newman and Gillian Jones.

Mouth-watering inspiration

My old friend Dan has just sent me some links to his amazing baking blog & Flickr photostream.  The 'Fougasse' loaves (on the left) look particularly irresistable. Perhaps that's what I need to give me some inspiration to do some more work!

Fiddle Festival Drawings

Just a few of my drawings of musicians playing live at the Scots Fiddle Festival in November.  The Festival's Artistic Director, Eilidh Steel (who is also a well-known fiddle-player) invited me to sit in on the recitals part of the Festival's programme.  Line up included Eilidh Steel and Mark Neal (guitar), Jamie Laval with Ross Martin (guitar) & Rod Weeks (Scottish small pipes) and  Ross Couper (fiddle) and Tom Oakes (guitar).  It was a brilliant opportunity, and quite challenging to draw so intensively, in such a public setting.  I'm planning to develop the drawings a wee bit and work towards an exhibition in the near future.  Thanks very much to Eilidh for inviting me, and making contact when she saw my prints and drawings of musicians during my Degree Show at Edinburgh College of Art last year.

Collagraph goes to new home!

I'm finally back on-line, with some great news, after major disruption caused by frozen power lines in the recent bad weather! I'm delighted that Emma Nightingale, sister of the owner of Cromarty House, has purchased this nine-plate collagraph print, one of a current edition of only two. I created the collagraph plates during my residency at Cromarty Arts Trust, as a visual response to the observations and drawings I made there during the beautiful autumn in Cromarty last October. I printed the plates whilst I was up in the Black Isle, at Highland Print Studio, a fantastic resource in nearby Inverness.

Gasworks

Just noticed this organisation on-line through Arts Professional. They run annual international residencies and exchanges; bringing artists over to London from across the world, as well as enabling artists from the UK to take up international residencies including Cuba and Kenya. Food for thought. Their interpretation of visual art embraces film and design as well as fine art. Inspiring model of working that's got me plotting and planning my dream scheme...

Brilliant Interactive Visual Art

I loved these interactive sculptural works in the Intermedia show at this year's Degree Show at eca. This one has a kind of back rest which feels as if you are being cuddled. The artist is a German mature student (female), & I will check out her name and edit this post once I have it.

Behind the Scenes: creating theatre for the very young

Just published on Blurb. Preview at http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1386638?ce=blurb_ew&utm_source=widget

My new website is up and running

Click on 'My New Website is up and running', or copy http://www.hannahrye.com/ into the explorer bar, to have a look at Hannah Rye Illustration. It features illustrations across different themes: from On Location and Performers, to Editorial work. There's also a selection of limited edition prints, pages from my sketchbook and drawing journals, and excerpts from 2 books.

Life saving printer!

This printer saved the day! After weeks trying unsuccessfully to print the rest of my book Behind the Scenes: Creating Theatre for the Very Young on the Epsom inkjet printers at edinburgh college of art, I was forced to make a last minute purchase of this printer. I chose inkjet over laser printing, as from what I'd learned it would be the most suitable way of reproducing my ink and watercolour illustrations to a high standard of finish for my final assessment.

Strangely, there don't seem to be any printers who reproduce commercially using ink-jet printing. The only place I found was a 'giclee' fine art printers in Leith, but they said it might be quite complicated to print the imposition of the book.

P.S. Thanks to my mum for waiting in all day for the delivery while I was busy screenprinting!

Wave illustrating original music by Matt Knight

This is a collagraph print I made for a friend's original music. He's working on an album at the moment, inspired by his family's traditions as fishermen and sea-faring folk in Ireland. Check out his music at MySpace by clicking on the title of this post.

Early Years Theatre Research Drawing

These drawings were all made on location - I have been documenting the work of two professional actresses as they devise a new play for Early Years children. The play is aimed at 1-2 year olds, and the development was funded by Imaginate and Starcatchers. Click the post title to link to the Starcatchers website.

Bay at the Back of the Ocean 2

Here is my final print on Saunders Waterford paper (a lovely paper). Below is the poem it accompanies.

We left the trail somewhere

between the one-room school

and the drookit bay.

Tethered to the gales,

the gulls were puppets.

We trod shyly.

From the summit of the chiseled crags

we spied the shore,

drenched with seeking,

seeping loss.

Wind-shaped branches,

arms reaching.

The crested coast sliced

deep with sand and wind and silence.

Two street lamps light

this six-mile moorland.

Neither work today.

By Emma Bartholomew

Bay at the Back of the Ocean 1

I've finally had chance to re-expose my photec plate - the bulb on the exposure unit had blown causing havoc for printmakers favouring this process.

The first image is a rough, composing the original drawings to create series of fragments - hopefully to give the sense of atmospheric snapshots sketched on the memory. It illustrates a poem about a bay on the Isle of Iona, off the West Coast of Scotland.