Green Surf Anemone

Green Surf Anemones - a five colour lino print (20x20xm)

Another print inspired by a trip to Vancouver Island earlier this year. As someone who cannot resist any chance to poke around in a rockpool the sight of these giant green anemones clinging to the fringes of the Pacific Ocean was bound to have me hooked. Unfortunately the weather didn't hold and our beach-bound activities became more bracing. On the plus side, in an attempt to escape the weather we did find the Uclulet Aquarium which is a fantastic hands-on experience with an excellent  ethos. 

Anyway back to the print. It was printed from two separate plates, one for the greys and one for the yellows and greens. The grey plate was cut for the rocks, printed in pale grey, cut again for the shadow and definition and printed again in dark grey. The yellow plate was similarly reduced twice after the initial carving.

 

Green Surf Anemones will be available shortly in my Folksy and Etsy shops.

Holiday hoarding

 

 

 

As well as armfuls of inspiration I've returned from holiday with bagfuls of materials. I love the different degrees of worm action in these four pieces of drift wood and I think I'll try to keep them together, not sure for what end yet though. I splashed out on a few pieces of tweed, a gorgeous sea blue-green from the Harris Tweed Hebrides , a little placemat and a fabulous piece of Breanish Tweed . I've started working with the  blue-green but I am saving the multi-coloured piece for something really special. The sea glass is actually my son's so out of bounds, but my eye was taken instead by these weathered buoy and float pieces, I love the way their colours have mellowed.

Here's a piece of the Harris Tweed, with wool covered limpet shells :) 

Swedish Thread 2

I've still got my thread head on, much buoyed up by the lovely comments to my previous post and by the arrival of a small stack of embroidery hoops :)


This one preempts what I hope will be a summer holiday spent gazing into rockpools, one of my favourite past times (equal place with beach combing). I'm hoping to work on some prints on this  theme but in the meantime I've been thinking about limpets. These gastropods are soft squidgy critters in a tough conical shell and they are near impossible to remove from a rock. Amazingly they gouge away at the rock and produce a shallow depression that is "home" then range around grazing for algae and other food before returning "home". I like to think they are performing a little dance as they go, maybe a limpet dosey doe or tango. 

and from the previous post...