rolling rolling rolling

When I started printing this morning this was the roller I grabbed - a Japanese hard shore rubber from Intaglio Printmakers. It's about 5 years old. I've mashed the heads of the screws that hold the roller to the handle so have to wash it in one piece. The rubber now has a slightly sticky texture, not sure if this was because I used white spirit on it a couple of times, or age or just general abuse *. Oh and the surface is no longer pristine, no major dings just a slight softening of the edges and some shallow texture. However this is still the one I choose.

Just over a year ago I was seduced by the gorgeous glossy green-ness of a durathene roller. It cost me a small fortune. And still I pick up my old rubber roller. Why? you might ask, well lend me your ears...

The durathene roller itself is a beautifully smooth surface and picks up and lays down ink a treat, it's the rest of the tool that irks me.

#1 the screws holding the roller bit in place are loosely fitting, hide water after washing, rust and then when least expected distribute rust powder over my ink

#2 probably because of #1 my roller squeaks. a lot!

#3 the wooden handle, which screws into the roller handle unscrews itself slightly with each rolling action and has to be repeatedly re-tightened.

I could probably deal with these but the last is my real bug bear

#4 it has no built-in rest to keep the freshly inked roller clear of any surface that will foul the ink

Basically this expensive product has the handle of a tool a 1/5 of its price.

Other rollers I have known ....

I have a smaller version of the Japanese rubber roller, I sometimes use this for selective inking. The other tool in the photo is an old rubber roller, I've  never used this for inking (the surface is very cracked) but it is useful for hand rubbing prints on fine tissues. In the past I've bought and used these cute little rollers nice smooth action and inking but the small circumference makes them impracticable for larger pieces.

I once bought a cheap black plastic roller. Nasty :-( 



* I use Caligo Safe Wash Inks and clean up with soap and water.

Vote for Newts!

Click to vote for this piece (you will have to scroll down to find it - hopefully not too far!)

This print has been shortlisted in the Jackson's Art IMPRESSIONS OF NATURE PRINTMAKING COMPETITION . Public voting is open until the end of April and can be accessed here .

The Hepworth Wakefield Print Fair

Print Fair image from a design by Laura Slater.

I'll be one of over 50 printmakers at the Hepworth Wakefield Print Fair this coming weekend. 

You can read my profile on The Hepworth Wakefield Blog here

Do come and say hello :-)

Click HERE for more details

Blog Hop

Midori Takaki has very kindly nominated me as the next leap in an around the world creative blog hop. So in this post I will attempt to answer the 4 set questions and nominate two other blog to take the hop forward (should be three but I missed out on that detail ;-)

So to the questions ...

What am I working on ?

I have print underway of a little riverside scene I observed at Upnor on the Medway in Kent (UK).

Lino marked with pencil, carved and ready for printing (after a quick clean up)

This piece started as a quick sketch for #drawaugust on twitter but I came to like the simplified forms of the dinghies and their uncharacteristic vertical stance and thought to develop it further with colour.

#drawingaugust day 19 notebook pen sketch of dinghies stored at Upnor 

I am planning two different colourways - traditional nautical blues and the other in perhaps orange and reds. There are two separate blocks, one for the colours and the others for grey tones which will cut into twice to bring out the detail of the timber work. I love these types of weathered marine structures and they have featured in some my previous prints including Blue House at Shellness and Morston Quay.

Blue House at Shellness - two plate (one reduced) lino print

Morston Quay - Two plate lino print

How does my work differ from others of its genre ?
Erm, what a tricky question! For me my work is different because it is the work I made. I know and have been in the landscapes I depict. I know or have made up the stories I tell. And I know very intimately the piece of lino that I have chipped and flicked and carved away and the ink I have rolled and blended and pressed. So of course my work feels very different to me than anybody else's, don't we all feel that way?

Little bird houses mounted on timber piles at the edge of the sea in Cowichan Bay, Vancouver Island

Why do I write/create what I do ?

I love the physicality of printing, the carving, the rolling out the ink and the winding of the press. The processes involved are diverse enough to keep my interest. And above all I get a little thrill from seeing twenty or so multiples of a design laid out in front of me at the end of a long evening with ink and press.

Thornborough Henges

How does my creative process work ?

For me printmaking is about capturing a glancing encounter or a moment in a landscape through sketching and design, tracing and carving, blending colours and inking and finally pressing. My approach is organic and flexible. I rarely begin with a fixed idea of the outcome and I often edit and re-work right through to the end.

I take photos, mostly bad ones, constantly when I am out walking, cycling or exploring. Sometimes a particular scene or setting will grab my attention there and then. Others times its only when I have mulled over the photos and perhaps done a little background research that an idea begins to formulate. Some prints come to fruition in weeks, others have taken months or years! 

AND now I have the pleasure of  passing the baton on to my nominees Cinzia Bacilieri and Murgatroyd Hoots.

Murgatroyd Hoots is a blog I have followed for a few years and I am always cheered to see Kathleen's quirky textile creations popping up in my reading list. This blog is such a wonderful melange of story-telling and colour strung together with thread and wrapped in a coat of the most beautiful vintage fabrics. A lovely world to dip into when the real one feels a bit bleugh! 

Vulpini (c) Murgatroyd Hoots

Cinzia Bacilieri is rare amongst the bloggers I follow in that I know her in real life too. We worked together quite a few years ago on a project to map the archaeological remains of coastal Yorkshire from air photographs. Besides being a air photo interpreter, archaeologist, lecturer in her native Italian and History of Art she is also a painter. Oh, and she speaks Korean too. Pop over to her blog to see just how her journey into the Korean language and culture has come together with her art work.

 Aura painting (c)  Cinzia Bacilieri

And do hop back and take a look at Midori's blog, apart from having two of the most covetable dogs on the internet she creates ceramic figures with the most serene and graceful faces and a whole menagerie of witty beasts.

(c) Midori Takaki 

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.

Long Beach, Tofino, Vancouver Island

Long Beach, Tofino, Vancouver Island.

The photo below was my first view of the Pacific Ocean.

And this was the same ocean the next day, perfect conditions for whale (and sea lion) spotting!

We visited Long Beach on a day of driving rain, crashing waves and sand-laden wind, but still is was fun tracking wolf (dog!) tracks, watching the sea eagles and waiting for bears to lumber out from the forest.  My only disappointment was not coming away with some of this mammoth drift wood (apparently illegal, even supposing we could lift it!)

also available in my Etsy shop

Beakhead Ornament

Birkin Beakheads II

Several years and one house move ago, before we sold it on ebay we were the inconvenienced owners of a coal-fired Rayburn. It was great for slow cook stews and the warming oven was ideal for softening lino prior to carving but it was pretty rubbish at the central heating thing. After one too many winters of lugging coal through the snow we decided it had to go. Since then I've taken to giving my lino a quick warm through in a very low oven. However the other night I'd absent-mindedly turned the dial around to 220 and promptly got sidetracked by a slightly bothersome email exchange. Twenty minutes later I remembered to retrieve the lino and it was well and truly baked.  In the past my oversights have led to a rather floppy and crumbly lino plate that soon restores to it workable state, but this time I had pushed it too far. As it cooled the surface began to bubble ominously and eventually the texture turned rather brittle and difficult to cut. Normally I would have called it a day at that point and started afresh but this was the second phase of a reduction lino print and I really couldn’t face beginning again and abandoning the 20 prints I had started. So on I carved. It was not nice, the surface kept lifting, I had to make much shallower cuts and I was convinced the whole piece would crumble before my eyes or at least start lifting once I ran a roller loaded with tacky ink over the surface. Once the carving was complete I flooded the cut areas with PVA in an attempt to stabilise the lino “baulks”. Fortunately the design didn’t have large areas of the second colour or the blistering would have been a really problem. When the PVA was nearly dry I put the lino under a little pressure in my nipping press in the hope that it would consolidate long enough to get through the edition of 20. When it came to printing I used slightly more oil that I usually would to reduce the tack. I am relieved to say that the carving survived the 20 inkings and pressings!

Ok enough of the rambling and more about this print…

The piece is inspired by the stunning beakhead ornamentation carved around the doorway of St Mary’s Church, Birkin. I came across this on a bike ride earlier this year and was stunned by these imaginary beasts. One of the beakhead beasts is slightly misaligned as if he might fly away at night and rejoin the flock at first light. Someone kindly pointed me to this article http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/beakhead/beakhead.htm which suggests there is a little pocket of similar work in this part of North Yorkshire. I really need to find the time to see the others.

Birkin Beakheads II

"Birkin beakheads" is available in two colours, grey and blue here and here.