Quay - work in progress

Phewee, another school holiday over, a whirlwind of travelling, walking, cycling, making, and the odd smidgeon of chocolate. It seems only yesterday that we were holed up out of the rain at Sandringham (the caravan site, not the royal residence) but we've been back a week now. That’s not to say that we didn’t have a very few good days on those stunning Norfolk beaches :) The sketch above is for a new print inspired by the marsh quays between Hunstanton and Wells.  

Random

I've been working on something a bit different for my latest print. I've been feeling that sometimes the way I approach the processes of draughting a design then transferring it to the lino prevents opportunities for a more spontaneous creation. For this print I took the random positioning of 28 little lino circles as my starting point. I covered some stiff card with pva and then moved the lino dots around in the glue until the distribution felt right. I liked the combination of black and white with accents for red in my woodpecker and oystercatchers prints so used this again.

I then transferred the positions of the dots to a fresh sheet of lino so that I could cut out white space around them.  I wasn't sure at this stage where the design would go but i started to think about the way growing wood diverges and then envelopes around protruding twigs and branches.

I sketched in a few pencil lines but then let the cutting tools lead the carving.

Random 28 ~ an original lino print ~ edition of 10