newsite

My website has been redesigned and updated, so please have a look! Cheers to Phil Marsden for helping me so much with it. 

www.marylundquist.com

And Phil's comics and illustrations are great so go to his website too!

http://www.phillipmarsden.com/index.html

mimus polyglottos

Yes, another Walt Whitman print. I have been making variations, trying different colored tissue paper and printmaking paper. This is my favorite of all, yellow and blue on cream paper. The inked lines are thin in some areas, though I like it because it's subtle and delicate. Isn't it neat how the bird is off the mark?

This is a gum arabic transfer print, made with a wax crayon and using blue ink. That's Rhonda who is in "tuesday morning illustrators" at the print studio. This technique is great for a loose and sketchy print, recording the scratchy wax drawing. 
This is a Northern Mockingbird! Looking a bit worried.

oh, walt

Two new prints. The top one is a portrait of Walt Whitman, the American poet. It's an etching with chine colle and I plan to do more with it in the future. The bottom print is a aluminium drypoint. The printmaking class is over and now we have 6 weeks to use the studio for ourselves, which I am really excited about! More prints to come...

new prints

Here are two more prints I've made in the print course. The one on top is a drypoint and I really like the way it came out. My intention was to use the strong dark lines to compress the space, making the scene seem very close, almost right up against the frame. I love how the drypoint gives you such dark values. 

The print on the bottom a soft ground etching, so the lines are softer, like vine charcoal. I drew it quickly and am happy with this print, though later I used an aqautint technique to add different shades and the result wasn't as strong as this first print. It is a sort of small homage to Shel Silvertein, one of my favorite illustrators whose work helped to shaped me in my early years. 

www.shelsilvertein.com

new type of drawing

The illustrators printmaking course which I am participating in is going very well. I'm challenged to work in ways that are backwards, complicated and unkown to me. The difficulties have produced some surprises and I am learning from it all. It seems like we've done so much, monoprints, etching, aqautints, drypoint, but I know full well that this is only scratching the surface of the possibilities of printmaking.

The thing I like the most so far is this strange distance between the time that you make marks in the plate, or card, or paper, and the point at which the print comes off the press. 

This is my first drypoint print and a very unrealistic portrait of my friend Keiron, who was sitting across from me. I like it. 

golden sea

Lately I have been slowing down, making more deliberate, planned, worked and re-worked images. This is a painting I did today from several sketches on the same theme.

I'd be glad to hear what people think of it.

etching no. one

This is my very first etching ever! I am honored to have been invited to be a part of a class of illustrators at the Bluecoat print studio. The course is lead by Emma Gregory and she is teaching seven Liverpool based illustrators how to use non-toxic intaglio printing processes. What an amazing opportunity! Today was our second meeting and printed our etchings. Last week we used monotypes and next week will be aquatints. Below is a monoprint: the original print on newsprint to right and the final print on the left.

anchor coffee co.

No, I'm not designing this for anyone except myself. And though I'd love to, I don't own a coffee company. This little sketch of a boat and anchor got me thinking about creating a packaging design for coffee beans, I'm not sure why. It was fun and I quite like it because I was able to make it look like a print. 

This logo happens to be for an actual cafe! The owners and I have been working together and this is almost the final design. I've also done the digits and the whole spanish alphabet in this font for them to use as they will. I'll post the final logo when it's done.

cafe verde

Some sketches for Cafe Verde! 

mona

This is a new painting and the sketch it was inspired by. It is interesting to see them together because each has its own unique character. It also makes obvious the things that can get lost in translation. The figure in the sketch is more expressive, which is often the case, and I am trying to bring the same amount of personality into the finish. 

The colors! They are the redeaming factor in the case for the paintings. For this peice I have taken up acrylic, which I haven't used for several months. The paint brought this little woman to life! My favorite part of this is the leafy bit on the bottom, but I am also pleased with the figure and her hair.

      This is Aladdin, though only after the fact. It is another situation where I tried to maintain the feeling of the simple pencil drawing and in this case I'm very happy with the likeness. 

farm logo

I have been commissioned to design a logo for Jesse's Aunt Betty. She has a farm in Maine and is going to begin marketing her fleeces online through Maine Fleece Coalition, so she asked me to come up with a logo! I am having a lot of fun drawing the sheep and also the coils of wool. I found references on the internet of sheep, but I drew these ones from my imagination. For the coil design I used a scarf of my own so that I could get an original shape. One of the most difficult parts of using Photoshop is that there are endless possibilities! Betty will decide which of these she likes the best and then I will refine it into a final design.

If anyone is interested in having a design or illustration done, please ask me about a commission. It would be wonderful if I could have a job like this going on all the time, or several at a time!

Merry Christmas

   I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year! Here is a little angel that I drew for email Christmas cards, maybe I'll get a printer next year and send them by post. 

Our Christmas tree! I was determined to make one for our flat, and here it is! It stands about a foot and a half, made of cardboard and paper. The green stuff is hand made paper I bought and also brown paper painted green with acrylic. The stars are paper too! Yellow on one side and a map of Great Britain on the other. This tree is around 80% recycled material! 

Jesse added an ornament: my name tag from Thanksgiving!

    As you can see, there is not one snow flake in all of Liverpool. This is my window sill, a sad winter sight for us New Englanders! These past few days have been drizzly, windy, and warm enough to go without a coat. I hear that snow does fall here, rarely. The closest I have witnessed is hale, which looked like snow at first, but just bounced on the ground and melted! As you can tell, I miss New England and wish we could be there for the holidays. Maybe next year!

tall tree

This is a new little painting. I made it for the Christmas Presence exhibition at the Bridewell and I'm really happy with how it came out! There is a frame for it, which separates the three sections. They fit together correctly when it's framed, but I like the disjointed way this looks. The middle is my favorite part.

Panic and such

Well our exhibition is up at Wolstenholme Projects and I am quite happy with how it turned out. The private view was lots of fun and I want to thank everyone for coming! Hannah is doing a week long residency at the Bluecoat this week called "eight days a week" so check it out if you can. Also the Bridewell Christmas market is this Saturday, I am helping out with it (as a part of my internship duty) and will also have a table there with handmade cards, books, and bookmarks. There will be an exhibition sale as well, so check it out! Get in the holiday spirit with some mulled wine and caroling. I can't wait, really.

Some photos of our show at Wolstenholme.

over cape cod

Another two pieces. These are about panic, like the others. The girl in the air, a dream of flying, looking at the curve of the earth (she is not panicking and has a pleasant emotion, perhaps just before the fright).  

The blue winged thing is an angel. I have often felt an enormous sense of fear, ever since childhood, when thinking about heaven, hell, and angels. This is a representation of the mystic angel that is at the gates of paradise, and her sword. She is blue, like the gods you will see in Indian art, which I find interesting and unnerving. 

shoot the moon

This is a new piece for the show called "don't panic" . It is about the worries related to being a female, and specifically toxic shock syndrome, a terribly scary name for an equally scary disease. It is a contemplation of the moon, of death and of the fear about the horrible things that can happen to our bodies. The personal element is that my mother (among her many unreasonable fears) opposed the use of tampons, which can cause tss, and instilled a fear of them in me.

A few things

There are so many things to do in the world! Here I've taken photos of a pillow and two new books. The quilt pattern on the pillow is called Tennessee Waltz and I made it using a sewing machine a while ago. I made one then for Jesse, and this one but never had the chance to finish it until now. The green border is hand stitched because I don't have a machine to use here, but I quite like how it came out and was successful in my "blind stitching".

Both of the books are pamphlet style and filled with graph paper. The design on the cover is a lino-cut, which I really like working with. I have been invited to share a table at a book arts fair in Liverpool, so I am starting to make more of them in order to sell and also a few personal books to show to people. It's so much fun!

The painting is a watercolor and based on a sketch I did at the veggie cafe on Lark Lane called Green Days. It was really nice how the cups and things were arranged on the table and how the shadows fell. Jesse was actually sitting there studying, but I cut him out!

Don't Panic

Here are two new watercolors. The one of the woman in the bathtub is the first in a series I am making for a group show. Two friends and I are putting together a show at Wolstenholme Projects, Liverpool city centre, where one of them has a studio. The title is "Don't Panic!" and my intention is to convey the fear or anxiety that occur in dreams as well as strange moments of panic in waking life. My aim is to have a range of images, some quiet, some humorous, and some more on the nervous side. I hope to show the scope of the state called panic.

This "flower beard" is a man who I think fits into my panic theme, though I'm not sure he'll be in the show. He represents old age and the reverence I feel towards age and those who live well in it. His flowering beard is the beauty this man holds in the later season of his life. After awhile I saw the similarity between this piece and my "Don Quixote" (first post on this blog) which is pretty neat. It was completely unintentional and so I can suppose that this is just part of my thought which insists in being known!

Birdhouse

Here are a few of the cards I have been making. My friend Hannah and I are working together on this project and planning to sell them at a local shop and at Christmas fairs. It's been really fun to work with linoleum prints and sewing. We are using mainly recycled or reused materials, which has been interesting and rewarding. They are all simple folded cards except the green one with the dark green ribbon, which is a pamphlet style book. I used paper from a sketchbook made from recycled paper for the inside pages and a road map of Britain for the end papers. Our little operation is called Birdhouse.

I'm excited about book arts still and am taking a workshop next month on binding, using recycled material of course!

On a Hill