Quentin Blake: Birds, Beasts and Explorers

Exhibition at Compton Verney, Warwickshire 27th May – 1st October

I visited this exhibition with Karen Parker from intersilient and we had a lot of fun and conversation over the 70 plus illustrations that were included in this exhibition.

Quentin Blake’s distinctive style is instantly recognisable – he has collaborated with many writers including Roald Dahl as well as illustrating and writing his own books.

His work is quirky and fun but I was particularly struck by a series of monochrome works exploring various modes of travel that had been created specifically for an exhibition called ‘The Only Way to Travel’ at Hastings Contemporary Gallery in East Sussex in 2017.

Pen, ink and watercolour on paper, these drawings showed travelers moving through vast, shadowy landscapes. Some of them were extremely poignant as they referenced the perilous journeys of migrants crossing the sea in small, crowded boats.

There is also a short film in which he explains his process and it is a fascinating insight into how he goes about his work. It was so good we watched it twice!

The exhibition is at Compton Verney until Sunday October 1^st 2023.

I’ve been experimenting making anthotypes since I first discovered the process during lockdown. It is an old photographic process that uses photosensitive material from plants to create an image and was invented in 1842 by Mary Somerville, a Scottish scientist and polymath.

An emulsion is made from any part of a plant – berries, petals and /or leaves ground up and mixed with a little water and alcohol such as vodka .

The emulsion is then painted onto watercolour paper and left to dry in a dark room.

Objects or positive images are placed on top and left outside in the sun for days, weeks or months depending on the intensity of the sun and the photosensitivity of the particular plant used.

This is an image I made using an emulsion of silver birch tree leaves and a diagram of a human heart. Silver birch produces salicylic acid which is said to help prevent heart attacks and strokes.

If you want to have a go you can find step by step instructions from this wonderful website

https://www.alternativephotography.com/anthotypes-anthotype-process/

I got out of the habit of using a sketchbook. I just started put things down on random pieces of paper instead which I discarded after I’d used the idea. Which meant I had nothing to look back on, no record of what had (or hadn’t) worked.

It was recently when I was looking through some old sketchbooks that I realised that they are so much more than just a random number of images and words.

For example, I found this one which I made after I found one of my neighbours ducks dead one morning. In fact the whole sketchbook is more than a collection of sketches – it’s a train of thought, a record of what I was thinking about and why: a kind of diary.

A sketchbook is a great way to document observations from around you as well as ideas from your mind – and quite often a combination of both – which is what makes your art particular to you.

I have noticed recurrent themes and it’s interesting to see how some have developed and how I am still struggling to visualize others. It’s a reminder of what an ongoing process that being an artist is.

Sketchbooks allow you to experiment without fear of failure, both with ideas and with materials. There is no need to pressure yourself – no one else need ever see your sketches, thoughts and ideas unless you choose to show them. They are a place to play, to work things out and mine are often loose, a bit crazy and messy.

So I am excited to have decided to start using a sketchbook again, it’s good to have a healthy habit!

I’ve been doing some research on birds and birdsong as I have some ideas for new work but I need to find out more.

A friend introduced me to the Merlin Bird ID App and has been developed by The Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Once downloaded you can use it to identify birds from a photograph or from a recording of the birdsong you can hear.

Merlin was created by bird experts for everyone. Merlin is global—look up any bird at any location. Keep track of your sightings—linked to eBird, a global database of more than 1 billion bird observations! Powered by Visipedia, Merlin Sound ID and Photo ID uses deep learning to identify birds in photos and sounds

It’s really accurate as I tested it against a friend of mine who is a life long bird spotter and can identify birds by their song and everything matched!

What I think is really clever is that it can identify many species of birds at the same time by the sound of their song. The recordings are available to listen to and it also tells you where the recording was made. Here’s a list of the birds that I heard on my walk in the woods this morning.

There are many other features to explore. For example you can download your data to their database which helps the Cornell lab to build a picture of which birds are living in which areas.

I am slightly obsessed by it.

Which is why I am telling everyone about it. Why not download it, see what you think and let me know

I have made a series of cyanotype artworks about the fractured habitats that birds and animals have to try and adapt to in order to survive – habitats that have been destroyed (wholly or partially) by mankind.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold coloured glue/clay/lacquer. The point is to highlight the breaks, not disguise them, in order to embrace the flawed or imperfect. It is built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections one can create something even stronger and beautiful. Sometimes in the process of repairing something that is broken one can create something that is more beautiful and resilient.

I am using gold metal leaf in these artworks in order to highlight the broken habitats that so many birds and animals have to live in – the gold is a message of hope – that there is still time for this destruction to be reversed and in some cases made even better than it was before.

We made two zines!

Me and my long time collaborator Richard Nicholls have just published 2 zines – each very different in concept, style and message.

A zine, (short for magazine or fanzine), is a self-published, limited run publication; traditionally hand-made and reproduced on a copy machine, although these days are often commercially printed, albeit still in small numbers and with the same non-commercial DIY philosophy.

The first zine we made, ‘enough to see but not enough to see by’, was inspired by ‘House of Leaves’ (Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000) which was also used as the starting point for one of our previous collaborative projects ‘Wall Stories’ which was shown as part of the ESPY Photographic Awards in 2019.

We set up some props in Richard’s studio and spent a day photographing them to give our interpretation of the complex novel. It has no clear singular meaning and the author has largely avoided giving a set interpretation of the text. This forces readers to walk away with their own conclusions.

It is one of my favourite books and I often go back to it to enjoy it’s complexity. It is typographically unique with copious footnotes and it is impossible to read the book the same way twice.

Our second zine, ‘end of an era’, shows photographs of the former Royal Worcester Porcelain Factory which closed in 2009 after 258 years. We took these images in 2012 when we had the opportunity to go around the site before it was cleared. This is the first time that the images have been seen in public. A zine seemed the most appropriate way to share the photographs in order to make them accessible to as many people as possible.

Both are available to buy on our websites. £5 if you would like to collect person or £7 if you would like one posted to you.

The process of making a zine has been really liberating and we are looking forward to making some more. I thoroughly recommend having a go yourself as there is lots of online advice.