The Calligraphy of Pine Trees -Sketchbooks and Rubbings

In July I spent a week on the outskirts of Palma at The Fundacion Pilar i Joan Miro a Mallorca on a printmaking workshop after receiving a grant. The grant paid not only for the workshop fee but also covered the cost of my flight and hotel!

The course I chose to take part in was called "The Calligraphy of Pine Trees" led by the artist Michael Angel Blanco - you can see some of his beautiful work here. It involved several day trips in to the Mallorcan mountains and countryside then a day in the printmaking workshops which was really thrilling to be working were Miro had worked!

For me - the amazing thing about the trip and the course was it was the first time in years that I've felt I've had a chunk of time totally to myself with the opportunity to explore a project purely for the process rather than an end result (whether that's a commission or a self imposed brief!) Also going somewhere completely alone and free to be totally autonomous was an amazingly liberating feeling! I loved that I could choose to spend three hours on a Saturday afternoon drawing in a tiny doll museum and no one knowing where I was. One of my best memories was staying up to 2am drawing on the hotel room floor with the balcony door open and just the sound of cicadas and the occasional car passing by.

The interesting thing about the trip was how, perhaps more than the work I produced, the value of it was in purely the experience. If only we could all have this stepping out of "real life" to "play" for a week once in a while.

Above are some of the sketches, rubbings and sun prints I produced during the week.