#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. 

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.

Upnor Dinghies

#DRAWAUGUST to #PRINTOCTOBER

#drawaugust sketch based on dinghies tied up on the River Medway at Upnor

drawing transferred to lino, one plate for the boat block colours
and the other for the timbers

Boat colours printed first

First carving of the timbers plate

Test print with markup

Block colour and 1st layer of grey for the timbers

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