Inked Steve Block

Steve block inked and printed, before the ink is cleaned off the block.

Starting to Cut Steve's Block

In and out of the oven with this piece of lino over the last few hours. A bit of cutting, a bit of warming and then more cutting.

Steve

One of my holiday tasks is to continue work on making prints of people I know. These images are parts of a sketch of Steve, working from a photo I took months ago. The whole sketch has now been transferred to the block and the block is warming up in the oven as the lino feels pretty hard - not quite sure how old it is.

Bamboo Forest

When I was in Japan I spent a little (far too little) time in Kyoto.

While I was there I walked up a road in the middle of a bamboo forest. I walked and walked up the hill away from my friends and listened to the sounds of the bamboo forest. There was a bit of a breeze and the bamboo swayed in it. The tops of the bamboo hit one another and the sounds they made were an unsyncopated rhythm of hollow clacks. Quite eerie and beautiful.

When I came home I immediately made a series of prints of bamboo forests.

Red & Brown Forest

I am still going through my boxes full of small blocks looking for interesting combinations.

This print is composed of two linoblocks. One is a swirly pattern that I use alternately as sky or water and this one was printed once and overprinted using a different portion of the block. The second lino is the tree block, here printed in two colours and offset slightly so that the trees appear to be different. The curved green pattern behind the trees is an old piece of wood that was wire brushed to bring out the grain. Again it was printed twice using two different colours and printing different sections of the block to give variety.

Altogether, a lot of movement going on in the background in contrast to the trees in front.

Sold December 5, 2009.

Thirty Three Bags of Apples

At the front of my house I share an apple tree with my next door neighbour. The tree is pretty old and produces full size apples which are actually good as eating or cooking apples - or they would be if they didn't have so many worms in them.

Unfortunately the apples fall off the tree before they are properly ripe and when they hit the sidewalk, the driveway and the road they split. Which brings on the wasps and generaly leaves everything a little messy.

And when they fall, do they ever fall. Lots and lots of them. I pick them up in the morning before I go to work. I pick them up in the evening when I come home from work. I sometimes pick them up again before I go to bed. I pick them out of my shrubs. I pick them from under the cars parked on the street. I pick them up from along the curb. I pick them off of my front walk. I clean them off of my neighbours front walk and my neighbours front lawn (she's old).

Oh, I pick them up and pick them up and pick them up. Thirty three bags in one week is the record!

Moleskine Covers

Over the summer I got out my stash of Japanese papers I used to use for papier mache and started printing covers for Moleskine 5" x 8" notebooks. Lots of fun.

Field of Running Horses

I have neglected the blog shamefully! Check the date of my last post.

Still making some 6" x 6" one of a kind prints.

I made 50 or 60 two years ago and they are long ago sold. So here I go making a few more. I am using much more transparent base with my inks so that the colour layering is visible which adds another layer of interest to the print.

Sold December 12, 2009.