I’m trying a couple of images on transparent film mounted on lightboxes for the upcoming exhibition, although the images are definitely more twilightboxes or nightboxes. The very slim, LED light boxes that you can get now intrigued me and I wanted to give them a try. I’m really happy with how the images have printed and the glow they get from the light coming through. They’re A3 size and i’m tempted to try a really big lightbox sometime too, they come very large (and heavy though!). This one above is a new image i’ve made from a photo I took last year; it’s very dark but on the lightbox it works a treat.

The prints are going to be built into black box frames (by Andy at Whitstable Framing who always does such a grand job for us when we have a show in Whitstable) so you won’t get the light leaking out as you can see in the image below where i’ve just laid the print on top.

And this image looked particularly rich with the light coming through:

It’s pretty much all gone off to the framers today so we’re on our way 😉

This post title sounds like a cheesy horror movie from the ’70s, but I wanted to try and get a dark night feel to this image as I start to try and learn photoshop properly (and the ’70s is my era anyway!). It still feels like a vast, impenetrable, intimidating labyrinth, but at least I’m starting to learn some of the basics, thanks to Jan, who is trying to teach me and  who has to listen to me going ‘it won’t do that thing now, why won’t it do that thing it did’, etc. Patience of a saint that man!

Our exhibition Semblance is three weeks away now and we’re starting to get ready for the actual opening. We booked the gallery a year ago, but there still doesn’t seem to be enough time to get everything done! 

There have been the customary  last minute hitches – I found out this week that the software I’d been editing my pics with and the way I’d been moving the files in and out of iPhoto had permanently knackered the resolution. So some late night reshooting and editing pics this week, I think it’s called learning the hard way, all good character- building stuff I’m sure. 

On a more successful note, friend and co-exhibitor Phil Gomm has been putting together some images to be printed and mounted on large canvas panels to provide an eye-catching display in the window of the gallery (the image above, with details of work by me, on the left, Phil Gomm, centre and Phill Hosking, right) and to introduce the show on the first wall you encounter as you come into the exhibition space. They look spiffing and help group the work of the three artists involved very nicely. Here’s a panel that introduces the Semblance theme: 

Here’s my individual panel with a bit of blurb to provide a context to my work. 

I’m going to be showing quite a variety of different media and approaches in this show; paintings, drawings, 3D work, maquettes, pigment prints from photographs and transparent prints on lightboxes. So this intro., along with some other text elements along the gallery wall will provide a hint of narrative to tie all the pieces together and, hopefully, help it to all gel as a group.

Ok, now what else to do? Oh yes, buy some bubbly for the private view! 😉

Painting some nocturnes on little bits of card, about 6 X 8 inches. These tiny paintings photograph terribly unfortunately , but they might make some ‘mood pieces’ to go in the exhibiton , dotted about for atmosphere.