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

end of #printoctober giveaway

Friday's print goes to

@MelanieWickham

thanks to everyone who retweeted :-)


Finally Friday's little print ... on gampi tissue and mounted on a slither of pacific driftwood.

Like this print the rules are simple, either hit the tweet button at the bottom of this post or, if you landed here from twitter, just retweet the original tweet. All entrants from Monday- Wednesday will be added to the Thursday pot but tweet again and I'll give you an extra chance !

Thursday's print goes to

@lp_lisa

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Thursday's little print has a silvery moon.

Thursday - Winter Moon #3 lightly embossed lino print on heavy white Somerset paper with silvery moon

Like this print the rules are simple, either hit the tweet button at the bottom of this post or, if you landed here from twitter, just retweet the original tweet. All entrants from Monday- Wednesday will be added to the Thursday pot but tweet again and I'll give you an extra chance !

Wednesday's print goes to @myblueshed 

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Wednesday's little print is on my all time favourite paper - Somerset Black.

Wednesday- Winter Moon #4 lightly embossed lino print on heavy black Somerset paper with silver accents

 
Like this print the rules are simple, either hit the tweet button at the bottom of this post or, if you landed here from twitter, just retweet the original tweet. All entrants from Monday & Tuesday will be added to the Wednesady pot but tweet again and I'll give you an extra chance !

Tuesday's print goes to  @laanduk .

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Tuesday's little print ...

TUESDAY - Winter Moon #2 lightly embossed lino print on heavy buff Somerset paper

Monday's print goes to @madeinbradley . All entrants from Monday will be added to the Tuesday pot but tweet again and I'll give you an extra chance !

PS I'm also happy to post overseas :-)

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MONDAY - Winter Moon #1 lightly embossed lino print on heavy white Somerset paper

To round off the month of October and in particular contributions to the hashtag #PRINTOCTOBER over on twitter I am giving away one of these little prints (just 17cm long) every day this week.
 
Like this print the rules are simple, either hit the tweet button at the bottom of this post or, if you landed here from twitter, just retweet the original tweet.

Not on twitter? Just leave a message in the comments box below.

I'll post up a new version of this print each day this week and send them out into the real world the week beginning 3rd Nov (assuming I have postal address for the winners by then).

Finally please do go and take a look at all the prints posted under the #PRINTOCTOBER hashtag.

New print and exhibition news

Physalis - Chinese Lanterns

I've been working on this new print since the beginning of the year. These Physalis or Chinese Lanterns have mysteriously found their way into an unproductive flowerbed underneath the privet hedge in my parent's garden. They brought a welcome shot of colour at Christmas so I am grabbed a few stems in the hope of retrieving some of the seeds. I really like the way these plants had decayed with the lower lanterns already turned to pale skeletons whilst the upper ones still glowed red.

I think this will be a very fitting piece for my exhibition at Stillingfleet Lodge Gardens in June. Click the link for the full (and diverse!) list of exhibitions at this venue this year and keep up to date by following @slgardens on twitter. 

Until then Physalis - Chinese Lanterns is available here and here. 

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.

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.

print or paint

preparation for lino print  - colour pencil on tracing paper over initial pencil sketch

I've been tempted to move away from the rather pared-back style I've had of late (see Morston Quay, Pied Wagtail and Oystercatchers) by the verdant lushness of the garden. Encouraged by much of the falling-from-the-sky-wet-stuff and my lassaiz faire attitude to weeding, most parts of the garden are looking pretty crowded, and I do like it that way. I was quite put out the other day when a bloke knocked on the door and offered to cut back my weeds sweeping his point through the cow parsley, self-seeded aquilegia heads and ox eye daisies poking through the tall grasses.

Miraculously in one corner of this chaos I have managed to sustain a small group of artichokes from last year and one has a pretty good choke on it already. This little group have provided the perfect subject for a more complex piece of work. I've photographed and sketched and now have a colour-coded plan (see above) as the basis for a 3-colour print, but I am wondering if I shouldn't tried it in watercolours instead...

Facteur 10 Print Exchange - print #1

Last year I participated in the Facteur 10 print exchange organised by estampe.be. This week my exchange prints arrived - whoopee! It was like christmas come early, except I don't usually get 10 little exquisite art works for christmas.   I'll be sharing them with you over the next week or so. Here's the first

(untitled) Lilliane Daigle, Canada

Fox in shop

This fox print is now in my shop but I am a bit worried that he's going to run amok amongst the hens and rabbits so someone re-home him soon please. He's a limited edition lino print (edition of 45), based on some disappointing photos I took through a double-glazed window on a dark evening in February this year. Having been painstakingly carved from the lino with some nice sharp steel tools he was inked up with glossy black oil-based ink and then lovingly pressed onto crisp white Zerkall paper by my cast iron bookbinding press (see this video for the process).

Faro Fishing Village, Gotland, Sweden

I think I will occasionally use this space a place to give a bit more background to some of my work. The print I use as my banner and its pair seem a good place to start. Gotland is a large island in the middle of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Latvia, Faro is the smaller neighbour clinging to its northern tip. There is real beauty here. There are delightful country roads deep-lined with wild flowers, strange marshy plateaux where small succulents cluster on the bare pink rocks, long sandy strands and stark pebbly beaches guarded by towering limestone stacks. It was a bright sunny day when we visited but there was a real sense of the deep bleak desolation.
Special offer to my blog readers, buy both Faro prints together for £40.00 + £3.00 uk p&p (overseas buyers please contact me first for a shipping quote) and save £5.00 on the current list prices. Just purchase from my Folksy shop in the normal way, type 02faro into the message box and I will refund you the saving through Paypal when your payment has been confirmed.

Cow with attitude #2

This is a open edition lino print of a limousin cow in a cattle shed. The award-winning herd is based up the road from my house and a common sight in the fields around the village. I've tried to capture the inquistive nature of these magnificent beasts. I'll shortly be listing this print with a full description in my Folksy shop.

Latest lino cut nearly ready for printing

Phew. After 15 long hours of careful cutting my latest lino plate is nearly ready for printing. This is a reworking of an old idea. The first version was in 4 or 5 colours and a bit too big for my press so the inking wasn't as even as I would have liked (see it here). So I've redesigned it for a one colour print.
Just as I was ready to print I discovered I had ordered the wrong paper. I prefer a nice crisp white Zerkall printing paper but I'd order some Hahnemule as an experiment. Its a much softer and creamier paper so I might try it with a rich dark brown ink rather than the black I had intended. More Zerkall is on order so there will be a black & white version too.