Julian Brasington
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julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Julian Brasington
@julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
9 followers 0 following 90 posts
Artist working in print, dry media, verse. North Wales. https://www.julianbrasington.co.uk

[bridged from https://toot.wales/@julianbrasington on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
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julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
I’m in the middle of a major rebuild of my website and am currently curating the work that I’ll show there. As part of the process, last night I gathered together ink-jet printouts of some of work that I’ve done over the last few years and laid them out randomly […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
A collection of print out images of art works group together in a roughly square arrangement on a red rug on a red tiled floor.
January 27, 2026 at 9:49 AM
Reposted by Julian Brasington
johnaltringham.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy
First proof print from the finished block. The columnar basalt cliffs of Rubha Hunish on the northern tip of Skye. 75x75mm wood engraving.

To the right, the engraving in a lemonwood block, after printing.
Wood engraving print in black ink of columnar basalt cliffs of Rubha Hunish on the northern tip of Skye. A steep rocky path descends from a break between the two buttresses and two tiny figures give the scene scale. Two engraving tools lie alongside. The engraving in a lemonwood block after printing. In cleaning the block after printing a little thinned ink may be wiped into the cuts obscuring some detail. This does not affect the quality of subsequent prints once the block has dried.
January 15, 2026 at 5:59 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Wouldn’t it be lovely if all was calm, still, and not subject to the whim of a few self-aggrandising people and the machines that support them. Perhaps one day. Until then, here’s a short poem I had published in Ink Sweat & Tears in 2024, and a linocut I made a […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
A poem after Galway Kinnell called ‘When one has lived a long time’. The poem is unpunctuated and reads: When one has lived a long time alone / and not alone your time become / someone’s history and you have grown / tired of yet another war and the world / has it in for you simply for being / wrong nation wrong colour wrong / construct in all its fairly-tale fictions / you begin the long slow weaning from lives / someone makes it their business to spoon / 24/7 into your small ever so human head / and dream of an island fish sea-wind / and a life lived companies by no more folk / as can live a long time alone / and not alone on a handful of salty acres Monochrome linocut in black in and portrait format in which a low, whale-backed island sits on a near horizon and beneath a stylised sky the clouds within which mirror the form of the island
January 13, 2026 at 11:53 AM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
First proof and this is one I am really going to have to think about. 15 x 15 cm linocut, mostly improvised on the block and suffering in the end from too much happening. That said, if you like detail, it might be worthwhile wandering around inside it for a bit […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
Square format linocut of a castle tower hidden behind a screen of interlacing branches and sat in the gold of fir-clad mountains. Birds fly around the castle in white cloud.
January 12, 2026 at 1:07 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Detail from a linocut work in progress. This is a block I abandoned a year or so back and came upon last week. It’s one of those ‘let’s see what happens pieces’ and I’m enjoying playing with it. Hoping to proof it next week before deciding where to go with foreground (not in this picture).

#linocut
Detail from a partially carved lino block showing a castle behind a screen of twining branches. Fir trees slope down towards the castle, framing a sky which is full of soaring birds and bird-shaped clouds.
January 9, 2026 at 8:10 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
One for the poetry peeps out there.

You can read similar stuff at:

https://www.julianbrasington.co.uk/poetry

#poetry
A poem called ‘Sea’. It reads: Is there ever a moment when you are still / stop moving, in your entirety // part shade, part light / torn to pieces, refigured eternally // I imagine you coming at this scab / we call an island, and not knowing it. // The edge of you / which is not edge, like skin // held to land’s light / glints upon a rib of sand, a foot // easing substance from the shore— / I wonder, is this where it starts // your beginning your end / as with drawn out breath // the moon sucks your sheet, begs you / leave this place for a moment naked.
December 9, 2025 at 4:25 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Living on the coast, it’s perhaps inevitable that the sea flows through my work and so I’ve added a filter to my website that allows you to search for seascapes in the shop. This photo shows a few of the prints and drawings that you’ll find there […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
A square format picture which frames 8 drawings and prints of the sea. The prints and drawings features islands, lighthouses, stormy skies and seas and are all in monochrome.
December 8, 2025 at 2:43 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
‘Looks like murder’, 22 x 20 cm linocut of The Street, Castle Combe. When I printed this piece it struck me (with its brooding blacks and stark whites) as a scene out of a 1930s murder mystery — hence the title. It is a print I made some three years back and such […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
Square format black and white linocut of a Cotswold street which slopes right to left down a steep hill. In the foreground, to the right, a Georgian house of three storeys set back from the road behind an iron railing. Lower down, in black, two stone houses behind which rises a church tower. Leafless branches reach towards the houses from the left and over the black river of a road.
December 6, 2025 at 10:32 AM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
A still night in the mountains. ‘Un Nos Ola Leuad’ (one moonlit night) is a 4.5 x 6 cm boxwood engraving which I have hand-pressed to Somerset Satin paper. If you know North Wales, you’ll likely recognise Castell Dolbadarn as its subject. The title for the print […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
An irregular shaped wood engraving printed in black ink on white paper depicting a round tower rising above woodland at the head of a lake. Mountains frame the woodland and above them rises a nighttime sky with a scimitar moon. The tower and woodland are reflected in the ruffled water of the lake.
November 25, 2025 at 11:23 AM
Reposted by Julian Brasington
johnaltringham.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy
Watercolour on Two Rivers handmade paper, the thick stuff. 79x56 cm.
Watercolour, 79x56cm. Scattered autumn leaves of many species on a white background. And a few seeds, berries and invertebrates.
November 20, 2025 at 7:20 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Just mailed out my latest newsletter. If you’d like to receive them in the future, you can subscribe from my website and unsubscribe whenever you want. The latest one has news of a recent commission by Amgueddfa Cymru / Museums Wales which I am looking forward to […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
Extract from a newsletter titled ‘Autumn roundup’. The newsletter is printed on a light grey background and the extract in the photo features a drawing of Eglwys Sant Baglan, and mention of a commission by Amgueddfa Cymru (Museums Wales)
November 11, 2025 at 3:17 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Wide format so you may have to play with this. 14 x 43 cm charcoal and Pierre noire drawing in a Stillman & Birn soft cover sketchbook. Eglwys Sant Baglan sits on the shore of the Afon Menai (Menai Strait) in North west Wales. A few years back I made a wood […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
Wide format charcoal drawing of a small church with a gable-end bellcote. The church is surrounded by a low walled enclosure and framed by trees whose branches are blown over it by the wind. Low mountains spread to either side of the church.
November 9, 2025 at 12:49 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Charcoal drawing based on fragments of a 12C baptismal font housed in the Musée Art et Histoire, Bruxelles. Somerset Satin paper, 56.5 x 26 cm.

I had intended more detail in this drawing but I reached a point yesterday where it felt finished. It said enough. And […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
Charcoal drawing in landscape format. A group of six shadowy figures emerge as loose forms beneath six narrow Romanesque arches. A halo can be made out behind the head of one of the central pair of figures. The drawing has the appearance of a stone rubbing.
November 6, 2025 at 10:59 AM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Came upon a box of Conté pencils when I was tidying up this afternoon and got distracted. Not quite got the angles nor the shade right on this drawing but it was good to work with the pencils. Just need to finish tidying up now.

#drawing #conte
Three-quarter profile of a woman’s face. The side turned towards us is in deep shade and the other in full light. The face is drawn in sanguine and the background in sepia. The light moves from sepia through cream to sanguine in three vertical strips.
October 23, 2025 at 6:19 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Cold hard stare. Sketchbook drawing — graphite on Ingres laid paper.

#drawing #portrait
Pencil drawing of a woman’s face in side profile, her eyebrow arched taught above her eye. A heavy line delineates the profile of her face.
October 23, 2025 at 7:35 AM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
New blog post on drawing without looking at your drawing. You may find it interesting if you’re looking to try something new.

https://www.julianbrasington.co.uk/blog/the-hand-knows-what-the-eye-sees
A6 drawing of a run of terraced cottages by sweep of a bend in a road A6 drawing of ‘The lookout’ at Garreg Llanfrothen in North Wales
October 20, 2025 at 12:31 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Been doing a lot of these lately. Compressed charcoal on heavy cartridge paper.

#drawing #charcoal
A face in three-quarter profile eyes turned to the viewer. The face is drawn in sanguine charcoal on a yellow ground which gives the face an earthly feel.
October 7, 2025 at 11:16 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Sat listening to Ólafur Arnalds ‘Momentary - choir version’ on loop and with my eyes closed I got the urge to draw with my eyes shut. I put two A3 sheets of paper together on my easel, shut my eyes and, with my right hand holding the top of the easel so that I […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
An A2 willow charcoal drawing. The sun sits low over an island on a near horizon. Fine lines arc outwards from the sun and over the island towards two figures who sit at the edge of the sea.
October 6, 2025 at 8:38 AM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
The things that lodge inside us.

Saw a stunning cloud formation yesterday and went to draw it in charcoal and this happened. I do and don’t like it as a drawing. The little house was added as a final touch and was unintended at the outset. It makes the […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
Portrait format drawing in charcoal on textured paper in which a small house sits on the brow of a mountain pass, dwarfed by a dark cloud which looms above it and from which a halo of light bursts up into the sky. The foreground is in deep shade and to the left, forcing the eye to the house, rises the edge of forest.
September 29, 2025 at 8:11 AM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Layered drawing. Working through an idea. This was going to be bigger and then it felt right to stop so I stopped. Lines in graphite lain one upon the other to see what can’t be seen. One of a series of pieces that I’m working exploring the hidden. Zoom in and walk around.

#drawing
Line drawing of a stone cottage in a field surrounded by birch trees. The trees conceal the cottage and hill behind but can be seen through such that what is in the background can be seen through that which is in the foreground.
September 24, 2025 at 7:19 AM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Currently working on a charcoal and Pierre Noire drawing on this abandoned Ty Hir. It’s a place that I visit often and have watched steadily decline.

#drawing #ynysmon #abandonedplaces
Landscape charcoal drawing taped to a board. A longhouse sits on a low horizon and is overtopped by a copse of trees. The house has lost lots of slates from the roof and worn timbers are evident. It is overgrown with brambles Detail of the drawing of the house showing line work on the roof and stone work on the gable wall
September 15, 2025 at 7:26 AM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Pen Llŷn. Work in progress. Charcoal. Not sure how this one will turn out. I’m building it up slowly in the hope of holding onto the light.

#drawing #charcoal
Charcoal drawing in landscape format of the chain of mountains that make up Pen Llŷn, as seen from Dinas Dinlle. The peninsula is silhouetted against a dark sky in which clouds taper off into the distance and the sun breaks through.
September 1, 2025 at 10:42 AM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Just posted a short blog which borrows from John Berger’s notion of point of crisis in the drawing process and applies it to the writing of poetry and the trickery of words.

The image is a detail from a linocut of mine called ‘Between words’ […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
Detail from a linocut of black lettering on a white ground. The letters spread across four short lines, three of which are taken up by the phrase ‘between words’.
August 20, 2025 at 10:35 AM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
Tidying up my studio today I came across a very light ghost print that I had made a couple of weeks ago. Rather than stashing it away, I decided to work on it with a mix of willow charcoal and compressed charcoal. Very liberating.

#drawing
A small church sits on the brow of a hill against a dark sky through which a circular moon shines. The sky is pitch black around the church, and scored with arcing lines and slash-like lines as it reaches up to the moon.
August 16, 2025 at 4:34 PM
julianbrasington.toot.wales.ap.brid.gy
I’ve had this piece on the back-burner for a year or so now, wondering what medium I might use. Decided to give monotype a go the other day and I’m pleased with how it’s come out. The print is 10 x 18 cm on Sunome Senaka paper. The verse is a poem of mine. You’ll […]

[Original post on toot.wales]
A monotype print in portrait format of an oystercatcher flying low over an abstract sea. The sea is crossed with black lines, dodge of which are formed into strings of words. Above the sea and to the left of the bird is a capitalised phrase ‘There’s nothing here’. The text in the sea follows on from this and reads: ‘but thorn, thrift, and what the sea brings, which is enough, so let us settle here, gather feathers, primaries, secondaries, sone discarded fishing net and weaves ourselves wings so that we too may yet be.’ Detail from the previous photos to show some of the text within the sea.
July 31, 2025 at 3:01 PM