Geese over Garforth

A quick glimpse of a sketch for my next print. Inspired by great Vs of geese that crossed over our heads on their way to Fairburn Ings one mid-December evening. Just magical! I've prepared the lino and, because I will be using the reduction method instead of individual plates, I have crossed all my fingers and toes!

The cutting has begun.


Happy New Year to you all & thanks for reading :)

"Collecting" skies

 

 

I've been "collecting" skies for a new print. It should be about rich inky darkness strewn with a few moonlit clouds but I have been repeatedly seduced by spectacular sunsets and sunrises.  Have there been more of these this autumn?

Hedge, fields and birds

Inspired by glorious sunrises, neatly clipped hedges and harking back to the days when large parts of lowland of England were still covered with the remains of medieval ridge and furrow (see Turning the Plough for an explanation of ridge and furrow). I spend a fair bit of my working day making maps of medieval field systems from old aerial photographs and its sad to see that so many of these wonderful corrugated earthworks have been ploughed down or built over. Inevitably they sometimes creep into my artwork.

Available here and here

hedge, fields, birds - work in progress 2

Second plate printed...

hedge, fields, birds - work in progress 1

I've been working on a print for the season, clipped hedgerows, long shadows, freshly ploughed fields, and strong autumnal colours. There have been some pretty dramatic sunsets over the past couple of weeks but its the sunrises that have really taken my breath away, especially if I happened to be cycling through the fields on my way to the station at the time - just magical!

Looking through the my recent photos I see orange in many places, in the sky, in a common starfish, in an unknown fruit and in a feathered thorn moth.

Here's a glimpse or two of the print in progress, with the first of the three blocks printed ...

FREE UK P&P for orders £60.00 and over in my Folksy Shop 'til Christmas. Click the banner above to see what's on offer.

marbled paper

Today we have been playing with the marbling inks I bought our son for his 7th birthday ( I think I got away with that!) We had a fantastic time swirling around the colours and created a huge range of patterns, here are a few, the others are destined for Thank You cards tomorrow. The only two downfalls were a. I bought my favourite colours not his (red!) and b. i didn't add quite enough thickener and so the ink did tend to sink a little. Other than that I think I'm hooked!