Thornborough Henges

My latest print is inspired by the prehistoric landscape of the Thornborough Henges. These three magnificent Neolithic monuments lie close to the River Ure near Ripon in North Yorkshire. They are defined by concentric rings of deep, wide ditches and high broad banks and are over 200m across. The henges lie together with an earlier cursus, (a very long enclosure of mysterious function), rows of pits and slots, which probably held timber posts and several barrows, which were the burial mounds of the Neolithic and Bronze Age. I've also incorporated the motif from sherds of Neolithic pottery uncovered by archaeological excavations nearby at Nosterfield. I rather like the way that the pottery motif, the cursus and pits have come to look like tattoos on the landscape.

I started with a much more detailed concept, intending to incorporate as much of the contemporary flora and fauna as I could glean from the archaeological record. But midway through sketching I changed direction and pared the design down to these simplest shapes and motifs. I might now return to the original ...

You can read more about the Thornborough Henges and other prehistoric monuments in the area here and about some of the results of excavations in and around the henges here.    

Thornborough Henges - an original lino print is available to buy here.

mystery egg

Can anybody identify this egg? Its about 5cm long.

My son found it in this little mossy hollow in a grassy bank at the edge of the football pitch in the village park but I can't imagine it was laid here. My best guess is that it has fallen from a nest in a nearby tree and been re-nested by unknown hands.

Neolithic monuments

Since I have finally, finally completed the Yorkshire Henges and their Environs Air Photo Mapping Project (chase the link at the end if the snappy title whets your appetite) I am at last allowing myself the luxury of looking at an archaeological landscape from a creative rather objective viewpoint. Whilst the project was ongoing it felt somehow wrong to use any mental energy thinking about the archaeology as the basis for a print when there was so much beeping mapping to do.

Now that I am freed from that particular shackle the target of my attentions is the Thornborough Henges, (not actually part of the above project but that's another story) These three vast circular monuments were built about four to five thousand years ago and survive today as impressive earthworks, although one is now largely concealed by woodland.

I've started and abandoned quite a few sketches but this is composition that it holding my favour at the moment. The colours will work themselves out on the inking slab (hopefully!).

Prehistoric Monuments in the A1 Corridor (links to pdf booklet )

Down the allotment - sketch to print

I started sketching for "Down the allotment" back in winter 2010. The plots in question are nestled between fields of wheat and barley on the chalk slopes overlooking the River Thames. I rather liked the way the bare bones of the allotments were visible at that time of year allowing the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the allotmenteers showing through. I took some photos and doodled some of the elements I really liked, the blue piping hoops, tyres as planters, water bottles on canes, and the door. The door wasn't actually on the allotments but is memory from my childhood. There are no boundaries to the fields here, no fences or hedges or ditches, just a change of crop, but I distinctly remember the door being set in a frame at the edge of the field. The memory is so vivid because the door was the subject of my first photograph that wasn't of people, probably on that horrible 110 film, anyway enough of the door. 

Allotment sketches 2010

Then I forgot all about the allotments and moved onto other projects.

Then last summer a commission for a wheat field lino print took me back through the fields again and I remembered what I had started and took this snap, which wasn't particularly useful for my winter scene better than nothing because I later realised I had lost the original photos.  

Allotments Summer 2012, looking north

Again I forgot about the allotment sketches until a month or so ago. I worked on the earlier composition and decided I need to lose the door.

Composition developed in photoshop

But I did want to create a more or less square format so thought that untamed verges of the allotments would be the perfect foil to the regular neatness of the plots, the stray wheat ears, the poppy seed heads and the brambles.

Tracing from photoshop printout

Then it was merely a case of re-tracing the design, re-scanning, tracing down to the lino.

Lino prepared with design ready for cutting

Then cutting the lino, perhaps still tweaking the design along the way and finally, finally printing.

'Down the Allotments' - Lino print.

'Down the allotment', available here and here

Goose Skein

Goose Skein is now available here and here, mounted, matted and ready to frame.

A reduction lino print in two shades of blue inspired by the flight of geese on a darkening winter's evening.

Tracking

The lovely thing about a light smattering of snow is the glimpse that it offers of the wildlife around. This morning we woke to the sight of two foxes running across the near-white field, we suspected they were around - the smell and their eerie cries - but we rarely see them.

Yesterday we walked the lanes and tracks around the village in search of evidence.

 

Pheasant  and rabbit prints

 Badger scrapes?

 

A veritable highway of little paw prints running across  a farm track from a small burrow (top) to the opposite verge (bottom)

  where we found a well gnawed beet!

 

mini roundabout

 

 hares!

  

salamanders!

 

Geese - work in progress

Judging by this rather mean little pile of lino shavings I haven't cut nearly enough out of this lino yet. Normally I have mounds of the stuff wafting round my elbows, and eventually round my ankles. But here's a glimpse of the cut so far (photo taken on a v. v dull day :() .

Click here to see the original sketch for this piece.