Victoria Willmott

Illustration, Children's Workshops, Art, Books, Day Job Studio. Bristol/London/Lancaster. Studying MA Multi-disciplinary Printmaking at UWE. 

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Train doodling #sketching #train #sketchbook

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Went to a fascinating talk by Jeff Bishop - Bristol through Maps- last night at Bristol Central Library! So many exciting maps and stories of Bristol 👍❤ #maps #bristol #jeffbishop #libraries #events

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Summer life

A little breather from the print studio, some time out in the park to get fresh air and people/bird watch in the summer sun. 

Can never get bored of drawing ducks it seems!

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Video of printing in Denmark

Ready set... Rolling! Making my lino stamps into prints in the studio, one lino at a time all hand printed. I started to imagine working very big with my little stamps would be a good idea... 

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Lino Stamps

It all started with one lino then came another... then another and then I had a city of stamps. I kept working on lino carvings of the buildings and places I had sketched whilst walking or had taken photographs of. I wanted to try and capture them in a playful way. I was really enjoying making the stamps, everyone in the studio was very curious of this special soft cut lino I had and what it might turn into. I was curious too! I wanted to just keep making until it felt it came together.

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Snapshots of Odense

Heading out of the studio I wanted to gather up some pictures of Odense to work from. I also just wanted to stroll around to get my bearings of places. This was starting to become really difficult with the amount of roadworks happening all across the city. The routes would change daily and I couldn’t read any of the maps all I knew was where the bakery was, the Hans Christian Anderson museum and the studio but most of the time I didn’t know how to get there I just knew I was there when I got there. 

The Odense Theatre - one of the oldest theatres in Denmark!

This is the studio’s recommended art shop, an Aladdin’s cave of paints and brushes. 

And here was where we spent most of our days at Fyns Grafiske Vaersted! Our print studio residency. As you can see the digger was placed right outside the studio for most of the time. The construction works were happening across the city and set to be completed in 2019. What I thought would be interesting to explore was to bring the building works into my prints. From my struggle of not being able to read the maps because of the rebuilding of roads I thought what I could do was create my own map to document the places, people and stories that I experienced. 

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Sketching in Aarhus

I loved Aarhus! It had a really artsy exciting feel which could be down to the incredible 10 floor art gallery we visited first. Looking out from the art gallery cafe I could see the city from a view and started sketching feverishly trying to capture the bustling feel. 

Hei! Everything felt much bigger then Odense here in Aarhus. People cycling, cars beeping, buses bustling and the sound of the boats barging.

We danced to celebrate the fun of Aarhus and for finding somewhere to park our hire car in the busy streets.

Quick sketches in pastel in the museum square.

Down at the harbour we sat and watched the water and I made this sketch. 

Here’s the proof! 

Oh there were so many Danish trendy cafes and boutiques. We had to rush back to get our car on the road again but will definitely come back again to explore more of this fun city.

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Tirpritz Museum and Jutland Bunkers

We headed west to the coast of Denmark to visit the newly re-opened Tirpritz Museum. This historic museum is built on an old German WW2 bunker that was the largest of its kind, yet  never to be completed. 

The architecture of the site is incredible, as you walk around you start to see more of the museum under the sand.

The new museum is built underground around and inside the bunker. The museum had some really interesting exhibits on, with an extraordinary video immersive room that took you on a time travel journey from ice-age to vikings to present day. All visitors were given a headset and guided through each room as part of the ticket.

Along the Jutland coastal line was what was called the ‘Atlanic wall’ a 5000km barrier defending the German troops during the World War 2. Over 200 bunkers were built along the west coast of Denmark. They’ve been sitting still, derelict and sombre now for over 70 years. 

Sinking slowly into the sand and becoming new canvases for artists and concrete playground for families. 

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Quick Visit to Ribe 

On our two jammed-packed days with a hire car we made a stop in Ribe, one of Denmark’s oldest city.  We didn’t get a chance to visit the viking museum but just a stroll around the town and cathedral. Inside the church are these beautiful murals painted by Carl Henning Pedersen - ‘the Scandinavian Chagall’ as he was affectionately described as. Very surreal and colourful paintings, I can definitely see the influence of Chagall. I liked them because they were unusual in this old Viking city. 

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Master Wieslaw Dabrowski 

Video of printing stone lithography by hand geared printing press. First proof of Jemma’s stone printed here. 

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Stone Lithography

Back at the studio I learnt the process of working on stone lithography. First we ground the stone so it removed the surface of the last image and prepared it to take a new drawing This took up to 2 hours - partly because I’ve never done it before. But would probably take 1/2 an hour to an hour once you get used to it.

Once ground, I simply put pencil to stone and made a drawing, exactly like you would on paper. It was such a lovely material to draw on. I used a black touse ink and a litho crayon to create my marks.

The stone then went under a series of ‘etching’ although very different to intaglio etching process. We applied a series of acid and talc and water to let it set so the non oily marks on the stone would resist the ink, and the oily part would pick up on the drawing. 

Luckily we had a very experienced lithography printmaker Wieslaw who was very patient with us and explained each step of the etching process and how to use the incredible hand geared printing press.

Here the stone is being prepared for the etching process, brushing acid into the drawing. It requires a lot of experience to know how much acid to apply and how little. I was in awe of Wieslaw knowing exactly how to treat each stone individually. 

These are some of the variations in colour that I printed to experiment. 

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Fjord Canal cycle ride

From the harbour we cycled along the fjord cycle route. On one side you could see the industrial factories on the other side meadows and farms and plum trees. 

Being with Jemma and Lisa we each found our own inspiration along the Fjord cycle route. Jemma was drawn to the industrial architecture, Lisa found joy picking the plums and I was admiring the trees, the pockets of forests next to these large industrial lands.

It inspired all of us to create our first prints in the studio.

I found this mini flag just nestled in the flower bed. It reminded me of the fairy tale of the brave tin soldier. Where the soldier goes on a journey on a paper boat. It could be the sail of his boat.

As we were cycling I kept stopping to take snaps of what I thought was a very Danish landscape or farmhouse.

These trees bordering the canal inspired by first stone litho print. The unison of the swaying branches felt incredibly dreamy. 

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Odense Harbour

After spending a lot of time wondering around the picturesque village streets of ‘Hans Christian Anderson town’ we were after some more brutalist architecture and were on a hunt for ruin abandon buildings. We found just that at the harbour. A lot of the area is undergoing development but it seemed some of the old factories are still running today. At the weekend though it was quiet and felt very different to the inner city of Odense.

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Odense Market

We loved visiting the market, every Wednesday and Sunday the market was always popular with locals and tourists! Fruit, veg, cheese, fish, flowers, trinkets, antiques.. all so much vibrancy. 

We also loved visiting the antique shops, I loved the old fashioned children’s toys. It was hard to leave the shop without forcing myself not to buy everything I touched. 

I loved the colours of these simple painted wooden houses and animals.

I kept finding these beautiful painted toys and objects amongst other toys. Everything is lost in the junk shop until it is found by a customer. It was quite sad to think of every old toy left there. 

This hanging puppet looked very helpless hooked up next to the skin of an alligator.  

This bird illustration book ended up coming home with me. I thought maybe I would try and memorise the names of the birds...

Also adored every children’s picture book I found. So at 50p a book I gathered up several and left pretty excited like a little child leaving her favourite toy book shop. 

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Road trip along west coast of Denmark

We hired a car and went on a ruin/inspiration hunt! We found this amazing abandon fairground in Fyns and it was a hidden beauty!

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Harbour Cycle

First day out on our bikes in Denmark. We went over to the harbourside in Odense and cycled along the Fjord canal route. Our bikes were a bit rickety so we stopped regularly to sketch the harbour and pick plums from the fruit trees along the canal.

Staring out in the water the ripples were really mesmerising but difficult to draw. 

Sketching the buildings and people floating in the sketchbook.

This drawing started off as a continuous line drawing to try and loosen up our sketches. It felt like it had been a while since I had drawn so regularly. This helped get started and made me look closer at what I was looking at.

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House Stamps

I made a rubber stamp drawing, carving in the streets to illustrate the danish buildings. Back at the house I used my coloured stamp pads and made a pattern. It reminds me of children’s play blocks or a jigsaw puzzle. I really enjoyed stamping it, who knew how much joy a stamp could bring.