Lino printed birds

I've been doing a lot of drawing in a Museum store, focusing on the bird scientific study skins...
It's been the best as a way of focusing on drawing skills.  The images I am making are just slightly different to the Foxes at the Disco though!

Don't worry - a few animals having a boogie are bound to fight their way out soon.

Flocks

Such a great time of year here, when all the birds start flying in for winter!  Geese are back :)  Time for the starlings to go, but they are still here, lining up on the roof top chittering and chattering...

I need to restock some of my prints and it would be great to do it this week ready for a break and a pause, but maybe the pause has started already!  See you in 2017.

Lots of handprinted bits and bobs...

 

...and some laser cut birds too!  So excited to have my lino printed birds turned into a lovely wooden flock.  That is my week filled up now, playing with wooden birds :)

Several of these printed goodies have found their way into my Folksy shop so you can always pop over there if you would like to!

Leeds Print Festival 2015

Some of my lino prints are heading off to the Leeds Print Festival this week, including this huge flock  of swallows.   They are going to be at the Leeds Gallery, Munro House if you are near by.

It's taken me ages to get them all into their pyjamas, they are such a twittery, flittery lot but finally they are packed and ready to go, wearing a mixture of floral, stripes, pacman and some very trendy triangles.

Really excited to be following along after them, but I'll have to wait until the end of the month as the postman won't take me, and actually my pyjamas are a little shabby in comparison (hmm, should I wear my PJs to the Print Festival so that everyone knows that I belong to my work?  *wanders off pondering....*)

Pigeons and pigeons and pigeons

I did resist the call of lino cutting on Christmas day itself, but managed to tuck in a few little sessions over the last couple of weeks, so now I'm having the fun of a new year printing week!!  Hurray.

What better way to begin a year than by creating your very own giant flock of pigeons?  I really can think of no better one...but that is probably just me.

I know lots of people design clever interlocking blocks in order to print lovely things like wallpaper and curtains, but I'm starting to think that carving one really huge lino block the size of an entire curtain might be a possibility...is that too obsessive?

Flocks of birds

As the dark evenings continue my flocks of birds are getting bigger...

There is a direct connection!

I'm really happy to stay in with some jolly tunes on my radiogram, a lino cutting tool or two and a sketchbook filled with summertime doodles...

sunshine, printing, waiting

It's sunny, I've been printing (how unusual...) and I'm waiting to hear about several little schemes in the next couple of weeks, so I'm also twitching.

When I opened my print drawer a few days ago it seemed quite empty and I have had a flurry of printing to fill it back up again.  I have even branched out into midnight blue as a change from always black (can you see the cards in the above photo are blue?  It was quite a radical move for me and I'm not sure that I will be able to sustain such impulsive ways of working).

I've also painted my garden gate blue today, but that is so bright in its blueness that it isn't even registering on my camera.  I hope that the neighbours recover.  I blame the sunshine and will try to reign it in for a while.

new lino prints...

I haven't done any printing all summer (apart for one commission that had to be done for a birthday, but that doesn't count!) although I have been drawing a lot and also cutting out lino blocks every now and then.

Now I am printing and printing and printing and having a great time.

It's really funny how a lot of drawing turns into ideas and images and they are often unrelated to where I've been and what I've been doing there, but do remind me of the summer.  Now I'm looking at pictures of birds roosting and thinking, 'Oh yes, that was from an idea on the beach in Cornwall, where it was lovely and sunny', but no birds roosting anywhere near and it was the wrong time of day anyway...

I've also been giving a bit of thought to which of my new prints I should giveaway in the next couple of weeks, but actually, I don't see why I should do all the work and I'm going to let the winner decide - after all, I still have to come up with a really tricky question or a terrifying dare that needs to be undertaken to win and luckily doing a lot of printing gives me a lot of time to think one up...

chipping away...

I'm having a lovely couple of weeks at the moment,  carving my way through a big pile of lino.

It's turned into a strange sort of game - I'm not going to do any printing until all the images are cut.  No one else knows I'm playing the game and I'm sure no one else would find it fun, but it's very satisfying having lots of 'nearly' prints piled up.

When I do start printing it means that I'm bound to be happy with some of them even if a few are not quite how I imagined.  

Once again a lot of them seem to be of birds too - how does that keep happening??

love birds

Something without hearts...
...in my Folksy shop today...


I've also put a few links over there on the left to some of the galleries around the UK who stock my work and I'd be so happy if you went and popped into any that are near you, because they all do such good work promoting artists.  I will try my hardest to find some new galleries to fill in the many gaps around the country too as there is a very Southern balance at the moment - but hey, that's where I am!!

things for folksy, but...

I've got a big pile of prints which I'm going to list on Folksy (let's be realistic and say 'in the next two weeks') but there is just one thing stopping me - the ironing.  I know I can crop the pictures, but if I just did some ironing (ever) then the photos would be a whole lot better, especially when it comes to tea towels and canvas bags.  Maybe this post will encourage a friend or relative to rush round, exasperated at the feebleness of a non-ironer, in-order to sort out the sorry state of my tablecloths, tea towels and bags.  I don't iron anything, ever - just imagine how scruffy my family are...

My excuses this week include chicks, quails, shallots needed harvesting, glorious sunshine and really glorious sunshine...

birds, birds, birds

Despite my best efforts I do always end up doing more prints of birds than anything else...how does it happen?

obviously the above are all regular visitors to my tiny urban back garden...

In other bird news, yesterday was bath day for the quails (sand bath that is...) and I cannot show with photos just how much they love it - ruffling and fluffling away, they all dive in and end up with legs and wings in all directions, looking scruffier than ever - but when they emerge, what beautiful sleek ladies they have become!!

 And they all know it too!

lambs and bird beaks...

This time last week we were in the middle of a stay at this lovely place in mid-Wales...

roaming around, enjoying the freedom and the sunshine (so much so that we stayed for an extra day and missed a teeny tiny bit of school...).  

When we went inside the shed at the bottom of the hill this is what we found - 

lots of lambs, all raring to go in the spring sunshine and here being bred for their beautifully coloured fleeces!  

This weekend we have been much better behaved and promise to be at school on the dot of 9.00 am.

I spent some time today trying out some different framing ideas for pictures,

this is one I've had for a while, but it's made out of driftwood and has just been waiting for the right sized picture to appear - maybe this is it, but I can't help swopping things around...