Red Kite Craft

The things I create can loosely be placed into a handful of categories, although there can be overlap and the occasional thing that just refuses to be bound by my labels – which until they deserve their own category, get shunted into the closest match.

Photography

In a variety of formats – mostly digital, taken with an Olympus Micro Four Thirds system. I also occasionally shoot in 35mm or 120 film. I also play with hybrid processes – such as using cyanotype to expose positives.

Woodworking

This can range from carving spoons in green woods from local hazel coppices to using sustainably-sourced hardwoods to make small items like knife handles, light pulls and fire-steels.

Leather & Lino

A couple of times a year I get to spend a day or two in my mum’s studio; when there we invariably end up experimenting with collagraphs, linocuts, woodcuts and the like.

I also make a few small things from leather from time-to-time.

Metalworking

This is a relatively new one for me; I have very limited experience with smithing. However, I have a fire-bowl and an anvil, and have begun to experiment a little.

I also experiment with using silver to make jewellery.

Ceramics

Did you know that clay is just clean mud? Did you know that a kiln is just a very hot fire? Did you know that if you make a very hot fire and put the clean mud into it, it turns into pottery?! It’s amazing what you can do with a barbeque, a heap of wood and a desk fan…

I started work on RedKiteCraft.co.uk in the summer of 2022, as I slowly began to share my makes with friends and colleagues. In addition, the occasional post about completed projects on Facebook or Twitter pulled in some interest from people more generally. Often this interest is expressed through “How…?” and occasionally, “Why…?!?” – so a way to quickly answer both types of questions was a good way of not having to repeat myself, especially as some of the processes involved can be a bit laborious.

More importantly however, it also provides a place where I can leave reminders for myself on what worked well and what didn’t, how certain aspects of projects were completed and what I’d do differently next time around.

Most items don’t get a detailed step-by-step, but I’ll add a few as time goes on. Often my hands are absolutely filthy when I’m working on something and that’s not conducive to good photography!

The posts below are any updates regarding the site itself:

I work full-time as a mental health nurse in the NHS and my evenings and weekends usually revolve around being a husband and parent. This is unfortunate, as all of these are considerable distractions that prevent me achieving my life’s work which is obviously, filling the entire house with sawdust.

I started mucking about with imaging equipment at a young age – memorably, aged five or so, by making a hundred copies of my hand on the photocopier at mum’s office when she turned her back for a few minutes. Later in childhood it was by being allowed to expend a frame or two of the family camera’s film on family holidays or using up a disposable camera in the first few days of a fortnight’s holiday.

The approach that film photography compels; a slower pace, deliberate choices and a wait for final results – is at odds with my natural flow and is probably why I enjoy it so much. Being made to stop, think and enjoy what’s in front of us is a Good Thing for a hobby to do, I feel

My underlying “let’s try it – do it now!” mindset has led to most of the other projects on this site. As a teenager, I spent a couple of summers working alongside my uncle Bill, repairing, maintaining and refurbishing wooden dinghies on the North Norfolk coast, which gave me a basic understanding of how to bend wood to your will and then make it shiny afterwards. After watching an episode of Ray Mears’ Bushcraft late one night, it occurred to me (perhaps not-unrelated to the fact that the earlier part of the evening had involved alcohol) that like Ray, I too could make a knife handle from wood and reindeer antler.

Over the following weeks, several evenings were spent sourcing bits of reindeer (antler, leather), some metal (steel blade & brass plate) and a couple of chunks of wood (beech, birch & ebony), while others were spent re-watching the clip on YouTube and looking for other information to draw on. In a counter-intuitive sort of way, the impulsive urge to See What Happens is often tempered by the urge to Get It Right.

The Get It Right urge was often a barrier to enjoying creative activities as a child. In art lessons I could never quite make the shapes on the paper match the image I was holding in my head, and likewise in design & tech, the finished product was always a little rougher, a little wonkier, than I wanted. As a result I developed some pretty strong internalised beliefs about being “not very creative”, despite the best efforts of my mum (artist) and some teachers (History & English, who warmly spoke of my writing in particular).

My mental health nursing degree involved rather more introspection than is always comfortable and a particularly good mentor on a placement encouraged me to get in touch with the bit of me that enjoys Play For Play’s Sake. Conscious effort to play seemed counterproductive, but timetabled time to muck about with paint and playdoh isn’t something you should pass up on, so I gave it a try. Further, by starting to accept feedback from colleagues about my ability to write in an engaging way coupled with those first forays into making a knife, I began to challenge my beliefs that Only Artists Make Art and that Creations Have To Be Perfect.

A decade and a half on, I’m getting there.