Next colour, one to go..

Put the next colour on the Oystercatchers 1 today. Went for a dark rich brown mixed down to a deep blue to give a bit of variety and suggest a blue watery shade to the puddles.  Though I didn't particularly want the two smaller foreground rocks to be blue, but brown like the main rock. This lead to a couple of experimentations with over rolling the two rocks with the brown part of the graduation out of sequence with the small roller. Cheatin' a little bit, but only a little bit.

Third layer

They can have a bit of a dry over the weekend and then its the black.....

Next birdie suite - Oystercatcher

Just about halfway through my next print, which is another Pembrokeshire picture with birds in. This time Oystercatchers instead of Chough. Oystercatchers are such a linocut bird. They have lovely bold black and white plumage and big pointy red beaks just perfect for a bit of a focal point in a linocut seascape.

This is the tracing I use to transfer the image to lino, after which I coloured it in to give me a rough idea what I was doing and to work out the what and where of the graduations.

During my last course,  with Sarah and Bob, we were looking through the work of an American Woodcut artist called JJ Lankes, who did lovely atmospheric black and white work. We were after inspiration on a background for Bob's bird. JJ uses a signature method for half-toning his skies by cutting fine parallel lines ( See below ) which Bob really liked and thought might work on his print, and he was right.

JJ Lankes 

I was already interested in the way it looked in JJ's prints and after seeing the results of Bob's print thought I should give it a go. ( One of the main reasons for having my workshops is to try out techniques and experiment safely with/on other artists work, that and steal any nice ideas they might have, of course. Thanks Bob ) I also wanted to try it out because I could use a darker toned blue for the first layer, giving a darker sea, without the sky, hopefully, being too dark as it would be more of a halftone due to all the cutting. This will negate the need for a second graduation being used mainly to darken down the sea and save it for the foreground. I also liked the way it gives a bit of body to the clouds without using the second colour.

First layer graduation.

First layer graduation. The sea has come out a bit greener than I would like due to the yellow in the foreground brown mixing with the blue in the background colour for the hills. Think it will work out okay as the sea will lighten as the following colours go on. Happy with the waves and do like the linear cutting for the sky just not sure if it works with the rest of the picture. It seems to instantly date that part of the picture as old and make it more woodcutty. Which may then clash with the rest of the print. Although again it will lighten up and should become more subtle and tonal as the darker colours go on around it, especially the birds. 

Detail showing sky & Oystercatchers

The second colour graduation. Much happier with the colour of the sea now the hills are darker and the crashing waves are building up nicely. Sky still a bit forward but I think once the last black colour goes on and the birds are a nice dramatic black and white it should, should, look okay. 

Second layer graduation

Do like the big billowing clouds though but could have cut a bit more white away from the tops to make them lighter and fluffier. ( My next print is of the Happisburgh lighthouse in Norfolk which, being Norfolk, has a very BIG sky with lots of fluffy and angry clouds filling more than half the picture so I will try this method again with those but really go to town. )

Tomorrow I print the third colour. Although I need to first finish the cutting of the waves and decide on the texture/patterning of the rocks as well as which sections of the wet sand in the foreground to cut away. Not even sure which colour/s/graduation to use. I'm hoping inspiration will hit overnight. I'll also put up Sarah and Bob's pictures in the next post.

Private view in Oxford

Have just received a very interesting invite from an alumni of my lino workshop from a couple of years ago. Robin Wilson an anthropologist is now working as a linocut artist in residence at Wytham woods producing a series of prints about the woods. He is having a pre-finish viewing of the work so far at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Have a look at the official info here

I am looking forward to a little trip down to Oxford for the private view soon.

March workshop

The first group workshop of the year and a really enjoyable three days. Two very different willing victims, Lee a painter and printmaker from the Crickhowell area, and Elizabeth a very enthusiastic beginner from near Bristol.

As usual we started with an artists waffling on about his own work for a morning, while the paying customers tried to squeeze a word or questions in when they could. Then we looked at subjects for a black and white image, and chatted about tools, materials and techniques.

After a successful day and a half printing the black and white prints we moved on to the main event.

Elizabeth used the same image again for her colour, while Lee nipped down the spa to buy some fruit for reference for his bowl of fruit image.

Fox and Lapwings by Elizabeth Smith

The bowl of fruit had a variety of final incarnations as we discussed the mount of black line/shadow it needed to be the most optimum. Below is the final version with only a small amount of black on the fruit above the line of the glass bowl. There was such a nice delicacy of colour and tone in the fruit we decided that too much black killed of the subtlety of the colour. So Lee kept cutting a little bit more each time and printing until he was happy. Two really lovely prints and well done to both Lee and Elizabeth.  

Bowl of fruit by Lee Wright

The Owl and the Swan

Found this little doodle of a swan in my Sleaford sketchbook and liked the simple shape with stylized fluid reflection. Thought it would be a good picture to try out the simple print with black background I fancied doing after being inspired by Tamsin's Owl.

Simple graduated colour for the first layer, yellow ochre at the top as I wanted to capture the warm yellow you see on a swans head. Graduating down to the cooler blue for the shadow/reflection.

For the second colour I tried a strong peacock blue, but wasn't really sure about it. Seemed a bit harsh. So went back to the tried and tested method of using the same graduation as the first but darker in hue.

Felt this worked better, and it shows off the colours on the swan better than the bright blue. Liked it so much I wondered about leaving it at this, and not putting the last layer of black over. Then realised that as using a black background was kind of the point of the whole print it would be a bit of a cop out to no do it. So today I inked up and thought I would try out one of the blue ones as a test proof. If I didn't like I could always clean up, cut out the background and just have a black outline. When I came to print I realised my roller was a bit glazed, so should be cleaned up before printing to pick up the ink properly. Decided not to bother as I was a bit hesitant about laying the black over that lovely graduation.

What that meant was the roller didn't pick up as well as it should and allied with a light application of pressure resulted in a really lovely broken almost sgraffito or monoprint texture. Gives a really nice sense of depth, texture and fluidity to the print. Almost exactly the kind of feel I have been missing from the , static colour you get from lino. I do love a bit of texture..

Walk like a duck..

After the lovely inspiring work of Tamsin, back to the final thoughts on where I'm going over the next couple of months or six: 

13. Waterfalls - All the Japanese woodblock artists I enjoy have all done an impressive collection of waterfall prints, sometimes with another focus, trees weathering the storm in front of the torrent, birds nesting by the splashing waters. Usually with an underlying meaning of fortitude, strength and steadfastness. 

Waterfalls combine all of my favourite elements in a subject. They have the movement and natural drama that rushing crashing water gives a picture. Like my coastal work, while their location in the hills and mountains supplies the exciting intersecting angles and dramatic lighting of the best of the mountain compositions. There is also something a bit mystical and uplifting about waterfalls even by the proxy of a two dimensional image. So come the heavy rains of spring I will be out waterfall hunting.  

Having done a couple of waterfalls already, this is one of my favourites, and indeed I must say one of my favourite prints. Really happy with the composition, the colour and the sense of chiaroscuro opening out from the dark shadowed background to the river rushing towards the viewer in the light. 

14. Nocturne - Try doing a small series of Nocturnes to look at limited colour, different light levels. lack of clarity and focus - Experiment with suggesting half seen scenes rather than all explicit black outlined clarity under a midday sun I currently end up with. Will combine this with the 'mist' prints which have a similar underlying idea.

15. Kacho - Ga - Prints of birds and nature. I always stick a little bird or two in my prints, to me they suggest movement in an otherwise static picture, the life hidden within any landscape and the passing of time captured in the moment the drawing is completed. The next step would obviously be to concentrate on the bird/animal as the main focus of the print. I have done a couple of birdy prints, the main one being my 'Swan and Cygnets preen' from the Montgomery canal series.

Swan and Cygnets preen

I have though lots of little doodles done as asides while sitting by rivers or lakes drawing the 'big picture'. A couple of ducks usually wander up to see what I am up to and, more importantly do I have any bread. They usually get a little thumbnail or two instead of any wheat based delicacy and I wanted to see what more I could make of these little sketches without worrying about a finished print. More of a study to just muck about a bit really. These two are a scribble from the shore of Llyn Gwynant, and as such there is not even enough information to be ornithologically accurate. Although they did have black heads and black and white on their sides. Any more knowledgeable twitchers feel free to ID my duckies. I was more concerned with loose play on pattern and texture than any attempt to show any particular breed.

Wildfowl study I

Particular bird targets are the heron, the red kite and the raven. All indigenous and almost all viewable from my garden in mid wales. The heron, especially, I see crashing out of the drainage ditches and flapping in their particularly prehistoric way into its favourite tree, whenever I walk my dog down to the Dyfi river. To get a closer look at the others I am going to need to get my boots dirty though and in the case of the raven, gain a bit of altitude. Oh dear a day on the hills, I may have to tramp up to the ridge of Cadair Idris, or even Aran Fawddwy to watch ravens tumbling and dancing with each other in the clear cold air. Poor old me!

The Owl and the Hare by Tamsin Abbott

The beginning of this week I had the pleasure of a two day one to one workshop with a very talented stained glass painter called Tamsin Abbot. You may know stained glass, and you may know glass painting but Tamsin's work combines the two into a very attractive individual artform.

you can see Tamsin's glasswork here.

DAY 1 - Tamsin has always had an interest in various forms of printmaking and aspects of her composition, subject matter and the way she draws on the glass have a marked affinity with the look of a lino print. When she sent me a link to her website my first thought was; "oo they're nice", and the second; "They'd work very well as a lino cut"

( My third thought was, " I wonder if I should get her to do the window for my sauna " but that's another story. )

It is nice being right occasionally, even if it is through someone else's hard work. On the first day Tamsin worked intently on a black and white print of one of her signature images, the barn owl. She was a natural with the lino!

 One of Tamsin's main concerns was the use and layering of colour. Though Tamsin selects each piece of glass in relation to her overall composition she doesn't get a chance to create the colours. These comes from the beautiful hand blown glass she sorts through and chooses for each picture. Layering complimentary colours and the do's and don'ts of colour use within reduction printing are a whole different story.

We decided, therefore, to start by adding a single colour layer, but use a graduation to increase the colour range within the single layer. As is self evident from Tamsin's glasswork, the planning and cutting of a lino fitted perfectly with her personal visual language. In a relatively short time Tamsin was using the tools confidently and varying her mark making to suite the different areas of the subjects plumage.  Her hard work and affinity for the medium show clearly in her first print. This quite exquisite barn owl:

'Owl' by Tamsin Abbot

DAY 2 - After Tamsin had fortified herself for the task ahead with a hearty breakfast at the Wynnstay Arms, we discussed Tamsin's second print. We ( I ) decided, after the unqualified success of the owl on day 1 that we could push on to doing a full three colour reduction print. Quite a lot of work for only your second print and even harder to complete in a single day... ( Not that I told Tamsin that! )
Tamsin had done some homework and redrawn a scraperboard picture of a hare fleeing a gathering storm which we discussed how to turn into a colour print. We settled on using a similar graduation to the Owl print, but darkening down the tone for each succeeding layer. We could then think about the tonal variation between layers without worrying about any colour change. Tamsin and I decided this would fit in with her usual imagery.
 Over the course of the day we played around with these layers, darkening each one through the edition to see how they worked in contrast to the following layer. There was also a lot of discussion on the best way to realise the hare standing out against the dark hillside. After a last minute mutiny on whether to print the hillside black, which had been the plan all along, then an injury time distraction from my two young children invading the studio, ( Which Tamsin dealt with admirably) we had 'Storm Hare' (my title). Another lovely print and a very impressive amount of work in a day:

'Storm Hare' by Tamsin Abbot

The 'Storm hare ' is a very effective honest print in it's own right that also fits in completely with Tamsins existing body of work. The cutting of the hair of the hare using both the colours and marks of the cutting are particularly effective and very well realised.
It is always fascinating to see what an accomplished artists can create with their first bit of lino and a helping hand and, if I'm honest, it also recharges my own visual batteries. Seeing new ways of working the lino can make you look at your own practice in a different way and rekindle a bit of enthusiasm. The use of black in Tamsin's work is particularly effective, strong and very dramatic without being too heavy or deadening.

I've already told Tamsin I shall be following her example, so expect to see a darker piece from me in the near future. ( In fact that A3 print of the swan with reflection I was going to cut out on a white background should work quite well on black, mmmmm......)