New Lino Print - Otter Feast

A new lino print of a trio of hungry otters - well not that hungry as they have a pile of fish to eat. I have only ever seen an otter footprint, never a glimpse of the elusive creature although apparently they do live right here in waterways of Bristol, urban otters! This was a fun little lino print to carve, especially the little pile of fish bones - somehow the perfect subject matter for lino. I have added the Otter Feast to my online shop HERE if you are interested in any more info about it (size, paper etc) so pop over and have a look.

Lovely Bear - lino cut print

A Lovely Bear lino cut ready to send out for Valentines Day this month - lots of my lino prints include retching dogs and fighting cats so this one is a little on it's own in terms of cuteness!! Also very happy to send secret messages in a little card along with the bear :) It is in my online shop just HERE if you would like to take a peek...

Beetle lino prints

For the last couple of years I have been drawing in our local Museums Natural History department whenever I get the chance.   The collections there are huge, varied and really inspiring.  Drawing the birds is my usual habit, but recently the curator had beetles out and I couldn't resist spending an afternoon drawing those too.

I found them tricky, I am no expert on beetle anatomy and they have so many parts - legs, antennae, etc that have to be in the right place.  My drawings would never be any use as an identifying guide but I had so much fun making them and learnt a lot too.

I couldn't resist making some lino prints from the drawings - keeping the slightly misplaced legs and wobbly lines where they were in my original drawing and using the scientific labels as part of the design.

Carving the lino block was tricky as I couldn't mis-cut anything - all those letters and legs!  It worked though, all in place and so in this picture you can see me peeling back the paper from one of the first prints I burnished from the block - success.

Hopefully this will become part of a small series of lino prints as it was great to work on.

Printing copper birds

With copper ink rolled out for another project I had to have a little play around and these birds were very keen to be printed in copper - how could I say no?

Lots of birds feathers have a beautiful sheen to them, often almost metallic so it seems like the right ink to use...

Now I want to try all the other lino blocks I have in 'shiny' too!

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!

Printing Cushions - A workshop...

Most of my printing time is spent printing on paper, and that is without doubt 'my thing'.  I love it and my brain is always filling up with ideas for lino prints, most of which never get out again, but I already feel that I have a good few years of lino print ideas stashed away just waiting for their turn.

As well as printing on paper I have also printed lots of other things, ranging from walls to pants (yes, underpants...) and printing on fabric has got to be number two.  I've printed hundreds of birds onto my bedroom curtains in the last two months and I'm now casting around the house for anything else that looks a bit plain!

If you fancy having a go at this or you have an idea that has been lurking at the back of your mind for a while I'm teaching a workshop this Saturday (25th Jan) at Makers in Bristol, where we are going to be printing cushions, so if you are free and want to join in the fun click here  to find out all the important info.

I love a project like this, where you can go from an idea to a finished item, looking great, with all the printing fun in the middle in the space of an afternoon!  The beauty of block printing is that even a simple shape or design will look brilliant as a repeat or mixed with another shape or in two colours, so this is a great chance to play around and see what can happen.  And there will definitely be cakes.

Printing with leaves - it's autumn you know..

I've been printing fabric with blocks made from oak leaves from our local park and it is just such fun!

First, leaf collecting is compulsive - finding the perfect specimens (not too crispy, not too mushy, similar size to all its friends...) and it is really hard to decide that you have enough and should stop collecting now.  Picking them straight from the tree is not permitted, some would say that it is cheating, this is an Autumn leaf project NOT an any old time of year thing...

Second, gluing them all to make printing blocks - that is fun too, do I need to explain?  Gluing leaves to card, theraputic, satisfying and you get to peel all the glue of your skin at the end, keeping you occupied while the leaf blocks dry out.  Maybe have a cup of tea while pulling the glue/skin layer off?

Third, rolling ink all over leaves - this is art all by itself isn't it?  The leaves were a really good colour already but I do like green and making my very own leaf green was a good thing (my picture makes these look greeny black, but they aren't in real life, they are zing green, my very own shade)

Fourth, printing on fabric - good fun, great results and very hard to stop.  How many metres of leaf fabric do I NEED?  But look, every print has subtle differences, little nuances so I must continue all day until the leaves have had enough and I have enough fabric to upholster a tree or maybe a whole woodland.

Fifth, return to woods/park/wilderness to collect more leaves....

Fabric printing - happy fish

Printing on fabric and then filling it with stuffing is very satisfying and also very distracting.  Other work I should be doing is struggling to compete with the thrill of stuffed animals.

I'm sure this fish is very friendly and to me he looks like a happy fish, but several people have commented on his very sharp teeth - it's not his fault and he promises not to use them on your fingers, he really is happy, you see.

I made him in one of those blurry moments of activity when you suddenly think "I'm going to print a bright green fish NOW, even though I should be helping my children with their spellings, and nothing will stop me, even a house with not one inch of clear space to work or the fact that there is nowhere to dry them...it will be done".

Because these are prints I can never stop at one, or even two and now I'm going to spend the rest of the summer sewing up the other members of the shoal (and all his hedgehog friends, we have a LOT of hoglets in our house at the moment - more on that later, because you can have one too...)

But for now I'm going to have to stop printing animals and get on with some REAL work, because the summer holidays are coming, (hooray, hooray) and I have two commissions to finish first. Maybe I'll just sew another fish first, because I have got some really nice watery fabric that will make a great back...

fabric printing workshop

This is what I'm doing on 3rd March - if you fancy coming along give Vic a ring at Papervillage.

What I love most about lino printing is that you really can print on anything (maybe with the exception of family pets) and once you start printing on fabric it is very hard to stop...