Golden Plovers at New England Bay

Golden Plovers at New England Bay

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some 'on the go' photos

Prints of 2015

I started this year with a couple of prints based on drawings, paintings and photos made and taken the previous summer in Dumfries and Galloway: the tiny harbour village of Portpatrick and ringed plovers scuttling along the tideline in New England Bay.

Portpatrick Harbour. (c) Alison Deegan 2015

Ringed Plovers at New England Bay. (c) Alison Deegan 2015

A trip to Denmark and the Vikingeskibsmuseet (Viking Ship Museum) inspired my next print, a much more stripped back design and more akin to my earlier Hardraw Force and Oystercatchers pieces.

Viking Ships III (c) Alison Deegan 2015

Then a small group of floral prints, prepared for an exhibition and working from studies made on trips to the south-west of Ireland and Flamborough Head.

Flamborough Hedgerow (c) Alison Deegan 2015

Rossbeigh Dune Viola (c) Alison Deegan 2015

Rossbeigh Sea Holly (c) Alison Deegan 2015

My last printing project of the year is an ongoing collage developing from a series of small lino prints I created over the month of October.

October Patchwork II (c) Alison Deegan 2015

Happy New Year :-)

#merrycraftmas #1

which suggests there are more to come!
maybe ;-)

#printoctober days 2 to 9

 I'm aiming to make 18 of these little prints and then spend some time experimenting with different arrangements and colours. Check on my progress and see the work of other printmakers on twitter #printoctober.

PS

I am donating £3.00 from the sale of each little 'Cobnuts' print to the Save the Children Refugee Crisis Appeal. 

Click on the image to buy. 

STILLINGFLEET LODGE GARDENS SEPTEMBER EXHIBITION

Rossbeigh Dune Violas - an original lino print

I am delighted to have been asked back to exhibit in the Stillingfleet Lodge Gardens cafe through the month of September. This lovely venue will be the perfect setting for my recent floral studies.

Stillingfleet Lodge Gardens & Nurseries
Stewart Lane,
Stillingfleet,
York,
YO19 6HP

 The opening times are available here.

Photos from last year's exhibition can be seen here

Rossbeigh Sea Holly

Here's a glimpse at the processes behind creating a print from two blocks of lino.

Rossbeigh Sea Holly

This small edition of just eight prints is available in my Etsy and Folksy shops.

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 .

Portpatrick Harbour, Mull of Galloway, Scotland

Portpatrick Harbour

From sketch to final edition

Top: watercolour sketch|blended greens & blues from the 1st block| pale grey from the 2nd block

Middle:  Mid-grey from 2nd block|lino block cut back for darkest grey| darkest grey from 2nd block

Bottom: 1st block cut back and inked for darker blues and greens| final edition out to dry

Portpatrick Harbour

Available now in my ETSY and FOLKSY shops

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.

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 

The Blue House at Shellness

The ink on the Blue House at Shellness has now had a good two weeks of drying time (which is more than my impatience normally allows) and has now been editioned and listed in my Etsy and Folksy shops.

Sometimes I like to check the progress of my cutting without getting inky and find a rubbing made with a soft and chunky colouring pencil and scraps of thin paper is just the job.

For more blue house for this link

Mussels & Barnacles - a reduction lino print

A little while ago, (yikes nearly three years actually!) I wrote this post about my travails with the reduction method of lino printing in two or more colours. As an alternative I developed a way of cutting and registering multiple blocks that worked with my little nipping press and I was reasonably happy with the results on Giant's Causeway and Artichokes, amongst others. This way the lino cuts for each colour are maintained intact as opposed the reduction method where the single plate is gradually destroyed.

However although my registration (getting the different colour blocks to match in the right place) improved with each new piece it became clear that what I couldn't do was cut the same line in exactly the same way twice, let alone three of four times. So I have wandered back into the realms of reduction and actually this time around its not so bad. I am now a lot more familiar with the inks I use, the properties of the different papers that I like and how to get the best from press so more prints make it to the final edition.

Detail from Mussels and Barnacles - a 3 colour reduction lino print - the barnacles were cut out before the 1st colour was printed so as to be left white as the pale, mid and  then dark blue layers were added in turn - I could never have cut each and every barnacle in the same way on 3 separate plates.

 

 

 

 

Mussels and Barnacles - Highlights and barnacles cut away - remainder printed in pale blue

Mussels and Barnacles - Pale blue and mid blue printed

Mussels and Barnacle - complete!

 Mussels and Barnacles is availabe in my Folksy shop and in my Etsy shop

   

Iced Blue Caribou

I was over the moon when the lovely folk at Jackson's Art chose to use one of my images on their newsletter the week before last. If you haven't seen it please do click on the image above.

They also sent me a voucher and some ink & paint goodies. I splurged the voucher on the biggest of gelli plates  and can't wait to start experimenting, hopefully I'll have some results to share here soon.

Iced Blue Caribou is available to buy in my ETSY shop and my FOLKSY shop .

Langoustine lunch

Langoustine Lunch - Etching with ink wash

The great thing about taking part in #printoctober on Twitter is that it has encouraged me to side-step my usual world of lino and explore some different techniques. 

First to make it beyond the drawing board was an etching on acetate, which is slightly foolhardy because I don't have an etching press. Undaunted I spent a happy if slightly fumy hour scoring a sheet of acetate with a soldering iron. 

Langoustine Lunch - actetate "etched" with soldering iron

Next was the inking. I though relief printing was messy but really it has nothing on inking up for intaglio printing. Having scrubbed ink into all the etches I wiped of the excess and then gave it a press. The result, as expected was not great, a nipping press simple cannot apply in enough pressure and doesn't have that roller action that intaglio really needs.

Langoustine Lunch - "etched" acetate proofed in nipping press.

I now see three ways to go with this: 

1 rub down the burrs to see whether that allows greater contact between ink in etches and the paper 

2 try pressing it through the mangle (requires cobweb extracation)

3 beg/borrow/steal time on someone else's etching press

I've added an ink wash to a few of the test prints (see top and below). Now back to the lino!

Langoustine Lunch - Etching with ink wash