I've been going through a few acrylic ink paintings recently because I'm teaching a one-day course on this medium at the studios of Artison, just outside Masham, in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire.

The course is on February 24th and what I hope to do is show a whole range of techniques which exploit the potential of this terrific medium.

Acrylic inks are a perfect crossover medium. They create inpervious surfaces in rich colour, like acylic paint, but can diluted and applied like watercolour. They can create intricate textures and will happily combine with other watersoluble media, like gouache.

Here are a few of the pictures I've created with acrylic inks over the last few years.

As you can see the colours are amazing and the textures varying from the subtle to the visually dissonnant.
 
If you'd like to book a place on the course click HERE

If you'd like to see more of my work featuring acrylic ink go to The Gallery, Masham, North Yorkshire, or visit their website by clicking HERE

And if you can't make the course but would like to try acrylic inks my recommendation would be for the wonderful range made by Rorher & Klinger of Leipzig. You can visit their site by clicking HERE

Its a beautiful, cold day in Masham, North Yorkshire. The frost- caked cars haven't shown a sign of thawing since dawn and now the light is fading. Last night the moon was enormous in a cloudless sky but tonight the clouds are over the Dales and maybe the temperature light creep above zero by morning.

I've been playing around with a few images over the last weeks which have resulted in the above screenprints. One of the great things about cold weather, and particularly the snow, is that it paints the world in a simpler palette. Somehow a one-colour landscape like the one of Masham, above right, seems perfectly fine in this weather. Similarly the one of Ladyhill, above left, reminds me perfectly of the way Wensleydale looked a few weeks ago when the first snow came.

Looking at them now reminded me of a poem* I wrote a few years ago as the weather began closing down the high road from Masham to Nidderdale, which it does nearly every winter around December:

Last Journey Of The Year

It is winter
And the thread of road over Pott Moor
Is dusted white
With the threat of January.

The wind has muscles here
That can tread life into a shallow grave
Without even trying.

Perhaps we won’t pass this way again
Until April relaxes the madman’s grip
On his axe of ice.

And standing in St. Chad’s tiny church
On its hill at the dalehead
It seems that we inhabit islands
In the archipelago of the Pennines
Whenever the snow falls.

Happy New Year!


To read more poetry CLICK HERE