Spring printing projects

I find the sunny, lighter days are perfect for a flurry of lino cutting activity...

In the past week I have lino cut the Teeny Tiny Bridge you can see in the photo, a flock of birds, an angry goose, an alien, a girl climbing over a mountain range and a herd of wild boar.

Next I need to print a whole lot of cards for our local arts trail in May, because that will be here in no time at all, lickety-split...

Not Blinking - lino cut

Hot off the press - well, wet off the press actually.  Oh, and I don't use a press at all, I hand burnish them all.

Here's my newest lino print 'Not Blinking'.

One of my favourite lino tasks is to cut out a whole lotta eyeballs, so this image is high on my list of good lino blocks to carve...

It's hanging out here at the moment if you want to look at it a bit more :)

In orbit...

A little space boy and his alien friend - in lino at last, it's what we've been waiting for :)

Cutting tentacles out of lino is fun, I must attempt a creature with more tentacles than this....

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.

Angry hedgehog!

At the moment we are busy working away on an exciting print project that we want lots of people to join in with and this funny fellow is one of the first hedgehogs to emerge ready....I think he looks a bit angry, but he's very friendly really!

I really love printing on fabric, it is such a satisfying surface and gives a really great quality to the image because of the texture of the image.  I also like the smell of the ink, so maybe that is part of the reason too!  In the next couple of weeks I am planning to print the first 100 hedgehogs ready for our project and I've already enlisted a Brownie pack to help me (they love hedgehogs so were really keen to join in - yipee).

If you like hedgehogs/sewing/painting/crafting/joint projects then you'll have to pop back here at the end of the month to find out what we are up to and how to join in and also see more great hedgehog images...

new prints and old prints...

Spotters Guide

I had donned my summer plumage and decided to spend the next three months playing outside on my allotment, but I've changed my mind now.  I think I'll stay indoors with the stove burning and draw pictures of animals instead.

I've made lots of new prints in the last few weeks, and they are all off to my real life galleries this time - not website ones - although I might keep a few here for our local Arts Trail in South Bristol, which happens this weekend.

I'm also thinking about using images from old print editions and having some cards printed from them - partly because I just can't say goodbye to them.  How do painters who only have one image part with them??  I think printmaking feeds my hoarding instincts...

mousetrap

nocturnal printing

I am a little bit nocturnal - although confusingly I also like to have a lot of sleep - and printing until late in the evening is often what I do.

In the daytime I am very easily distracted, by anything or nothing much, but in the evening there is less of that somehow...and then I can print until I am nearly asleep.

This week I have made a lot of cards (maybe 'lot' should be in capitals, because I mean a LOT) and I'll be dropping some off to Bristol Museum and Art Gallery to top up their shop and then posting the rest out to other galleries - happily not a single Christmas card is included...



By the way - have you spotted that I'm not using a press?  This lovely boxwood tool makes all my prints.  I think by now it could probably do them on it's own as we have made hundreds together, but I do still like to be a little bit involved.

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...

printing and then a giveaway...

Over the last few weeks I have been cutting out several new lino blocks and now printing day is getting closer....yippee.

The prints will appear in my Folksy and Etsy shops this time (if they all look like the pictures in my head when they are printed) along with a few new photos of my existing tea towels and canvas bags which Lou has been taking for me.

And then I thought it might be time for a little giveaway because they are such fun, the only problem being that I haven't done the printing yet and I haven't thought of a tricky question that needs answering before you can enter....but I've got a few days to come up with one.

printing multiples

There is something very satisfying about making the same thing over and over again.

Lots of little butterfly labels have been fluttering around my work table (and they are little, as they are only 4cm long...) and although I'm sure I've got enough now and haven't thought up a use for this many  little labels I can tell I'm going to keep printing until both packets of blank labels are empty.

sunshine and oak leaves

I've been enjoying printing with the sun streaming in through the windows today, pictures of Bristol Suspension Bridge, with the slopes of Leigh Woods covered with big oak leaves and whitebeam leaves (a species of which is native only to the Avon Gorge, which the bridge spans) and a very serious peregrine falcon surveying the scene.

A new selection of my Bristol prints are about to go to The Framing Factory on Bristol docks to replenish the ones that are already there.  Have a look if you find yourself wandering along the docks anytime soon!!

life outdoors

We've been doing a lot of this lately....it's lambing time, hooray.  Nothing beats cuddling a warm, woolly lamb to tell you that it's spring.

Time to start allotmenting and lining up seed packets, planning all the yummy veg that we will be transporting home by the wheelbarrow full later in the year (always good to be optimistic in the spring, don't you think).

Every time I have passed a packet of squash seeds through the winter I've found myself at the till, 'investing' in another variety, because we really love to eat them and now I find I have enough seeds to start a squash plantation - never mind the other veg. that I'm going to have to squeeze in around them.

It's also hard to see much printing happening over the next few weeks as the call of the soil has started, although I have signed up for our local arts trail and various other projects over the coming year and probably can't put the same pictures up as last year, can I?

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??

lino blocks

I thought you might like to see the lino block for 'Cat on Stilts' (well the cat part of it anyhow).  It was one of the images on my previous post, so I wont put that up again, you'll have to scroll down...

Lino blocks often look pretty interesting to me, especially once they have been inked up and a couple of galleries have even asked me to frame up the block alongside prints for shows.  I never have though.  It is a great way of showing people how you make the print!  I was just sharpening up the cat fur in this picture which is why he's covered with 'bits'.


Next post is giveaway post, my first, how exciting.  A clue - it is going to be a useful insect...

ready to go...

A happy day spent up to my elbows in bubblewrap and packing tape.  I'm sending out lots of work to galleries in the next couple of weeks, topping up my fantastic regular stockists and also (fingers crossed) trying three new galleries this Autumn which is very exciting.  I'll let you know who they are once the work is on the way...

Todays parcel is for the gallery at Snape Maltings, who have shown my work for quite a few years now.  If you are in the right part of the country Snape Maltings is well worth a visit, there is always something going on - farmers markets, boat trips, brilliant childrens activities - as well as the concert hall (and gallery!)

I'm sending a few framed and also a big batch of unframed prints - here a couple of my current favourites (are you allowed to have favourites of your own work?) "Malodorous animals" and...

..."Cat on Stilts"...

I can feel an early autumn giveaway coming soon too...

aren't people clever?

I taught a beginners lino printing course last weekend and thought I should show you some of the results.  Everyone was a true beginner and they really went for it, with only a few moments of 'blank page' nerves!

Above is a sheet printed with the test pieces of lino, for trying out tools and getting a feel for cutting before tackling the 'real' thing, but don't they all look great printed together.

Then everyone got stuck in and we all managed to have something printed by the end.  Hurrah.  No blood and no tears.

(In case you think I was being incredibly mean and giving the poor students super bumpy paper to print on, these photos are of the prints they made on the walls of the shop.  Yep, they'd printed all the paper, card and tissue and moved onto the walls....it was that kind of workshop)

I'll be running another of these courses at Paper Village in Bristol on 27th November if you are around. Might be useful for those moved to make their own cards etc for that looming day of the year!

printing and packaging

This weeks task is printing cards - I love doing this, a satisfying line of cards drying on every window sill makes it look like a very productive day.  Lots of different images for me to look at, so no chance of getting bored and finding all kinds of old lino blocks in my drawer and thinking 'oh yes! this will make a great card, why have I never used this design before??'

Then I have to put them into little packets ready to go to the shops/galleries who stock them...I hate doing this - hopefully one day I'll have my own packaging department who will take on the task for me...

my bottom drawer...

Would you post a picture of your bottom drawer on a blog??  If it was any other drawer in the house I would ensure that no one even peeked inside for a second - years have passed without a single spring clean or a good clearout...

But this is my favourite drawer, filled with random bits of printing stuff, in a muddle, but a working muddle where I can put my hands on whatever I want in seconds and with a lovely inky smell...

a world of contrasts

I love the contrasts that life gives us...

Last weekend was the Affordable Art Fair in Bristol and I was lucky enough to have my work there with Grant Bradley Gallery...

Here's a photo from the private view, wine flowing, crowds wandering and lots of arty chat...what a lovely way to spend an evening....

...and a rare non-inkstained photo of the artist, taken by Lou my partner in crime for an evening of window shopping for the best and worst that we could find - I never managed to get the best down to even a short list, thank goodness for invisible money..

...and then home for a week of poorly, spotty children and printing and packaging ready for the Southbank Arts Trail - will the glamour never end?