This post is a catch up of the various trips, workshops and exhibitions our wonderful head of course.
SUMMER
The 2017 MA illustration students excelled in an August wood engraving workshop, with fine prints made quickly, using very small woodblocks.
This was a table-top two-day workshop, held on the third floor of Evolution House.
Students worked from drawings, from which they engraved images into the end-grain surface of Lemonwood. T. N. Lawrence Carbon Black Letterpress ink was rolled onto a great big sheet of glass, thence on to the blocks.
All impressions were made by hand-burnishing onto a cheap Chinese rice paper. We also used a more expensive Japanese paper, Arakaji Natural, for final quality prints. These were displayed and discussed.
AUTUMN
Jonathan travelled to Sussex for a similar weekend workshop at the Moncrieff-Bray Gallery with a room of twelve students, & a most productive day. The workshop was connected to Abstracted Landscapes, a group exhibition in which Jonathan showed some recent works.
In November, Jonathan took part in the Illustrating Identites symposium, at the Université de Lorraine, an Illustration Research event, where he presented Drawing Book & Picture Hooks. His paper concerned collaborative projects between writers, illustrators, agents, publishers, ECA students & staff and primary schools in Scotland. In Nancy, fellow illustrator Jonny Hannah also presented a paper about Identity. The two Jonnys wore illustrated masks and performed Quel Temps Fait Il A Paris by Jaques Trenet. They played it again at Airs, Reels, & Ballads, Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, in the month of November, and one more time, encore, with some other tunes at the Darktown Valentine’s Cabaret, Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
WINTER
This February 2018, an MFA wood engraving class was held Evolution House Boardroom. With small woodblocks, the students produced excellent results throughout a day of intensive printmaking.
During the same month, Jonathan Gibbs exhibited eighty-seven works at the Open Eye Gallery. These were paintings, drawings and wood engravings. Included was a set of four illustrations commissioned by Dr Davide Messina for a one-day symposium, Europa’s Long Renaissance: Myth, Metamorphoses, Migrations. Also shown were illustrations for Penguin, Goodwood Magazine, Alexanders, and Canongate.
SPRING
He has been working on pieces of Baltic Fir timber, requisitioned book-shelves from the Advocate’s Library in the University of Edinburgh. Jonathan also uses, Pine, Whitebeam, Lemonwood, Box, and Holly. This month, he is a visiting artist in the Independent Artist Programme at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou.
