Happy Birthday Andrew

I made this print when I lived in Taiwan.

I had a friend there whose birthday fell on the 15th of February, right after Valentine's Day.  As usual, with most birthdays close to other significant days, his birthday was lost in the rush of hearts and sweets and kisses from the day before.

So I made this print as a gift for him and also as a small visual pun based on his birth date.

Happy Birthday Andrew is available for sale here.

Twisted Trunk

Another print finished last year.  The gnarled trunk of this pine tree was what attracted me.  The bark on the trunk was very textured, but I decided that it was the form of the trunk that I wanted to concentrate on and have the pine needles add a light and lacy texture to the final image.

Twisted Trunk is available for sale here.

Black Pine

I started making prints of windswept trees in 2004 and find I keep on returning to that idea. While I was in Japan in 2008 I took photos of many trees and I will eventually get around to making some of those into new prints. The only thing is, since most of them are pine trees, I am going to have an interesting time coming up with titles that aren't too repetitive. I already have six prints with the word pine in the title.

This Black Pine print was completed last year, just in time for me to use my new chop. The chop was brought back from China by my friend Lin and this is the first print I used it on. I like the organic imperfect shape and the old style calligraphy used for the letters.

Black Pine is available for sale here.

Rocks at Mabou Coal Mines Beach

I started this print last December and then put it aside thinking it would be easy to finish whenever I wanted to. Should never do that.

When I got back to it I decided that my original thought of black and white rocks with some sort of texture for sand was too blank looking. So I added a reduction backing block and went for full on colour.

Rocks at Mabou Coal Mines Beach is available for sale here.

Sunnyside Breakwater

Last summer I was in an art show on the Western Beaches in Toronto at the Sunnyside Bathing Pavilion. There is a swimming area separated from Lake Ontario with a concrete and stone breakwater and I took a few photographs.

I completed this reduction print in the spring.

Sunnyside Breakwater is available for sale here.

The Ridge Roof

I have quite a collection of photos of the farmhouse near Mabou in Cape Breton where my father was born. This print is based on one of those photographs and shows the new part of the house built by my grandfather - a two storey addition. The house is clad in cedar shingles painted white, but now faded with the weather. The lines are simple and unadorned.

This is a reduction print. I used pink and mauve to soften the austerity of the house and the red of the power line leading to the road lifts gives a jump to the image.

When I showed this to my father, he said it was perfect, just perfect.

The Ridge Roof is available for sale here.

Red Bead Necklace

Last summer, when my niece was opening her birthday presents I took the photo that this print is based on. Umm, the necklace wasn't actually red.


Red Bead Necklace is available for sale here.

Steve Proof

First proof in black which feels a bit too stark. The sneakers will be turquoise and maybe the rest will be purple. Have to see.

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.

Red Fish Swimming

I have to admit I like a lot of the names I give my prints because they are often just off the top of my head and relate very directly to the print. So Red Fish Swimming really is about red fish swimming. You've got the fish, you've got the water - they have to be swimming - right?. And unless you are colourblind, yes they are red.

Blue Horse Running

Another 'cobbled' together print.

The sky is from another reject block. What was I thinking at the time? It is a great block. Good thing I didn't throw it out. I learned that lesson a few years ago when I came across a proof of a print that I thought, at the time, was a lousy image, but years later saw that it was actually quite good. Did I still have the blocks? Nope. Too bad - so sad. I still have the proof though. The colours are a bit wishy washy, but the image definitely had potential. Sigh.

The landform is from a print that never made it through the proofing stage, but by this time I knew better and I saved the blocks and lo and behold this block is actually quite useful. I think I may have to make a few more blocks like this for more variety.

And the horse. Ah, that little horse block has been around for a long time now. When I first cut the block, I didn't have any real use for him. It was only a couple of years later in 1999 that I editioned him up in a print called Running Horse. And now he is continuing to run through all sorts of one-of-a-kind prints.

More Holland Willows

I have been on a bit of a printing binge lately and have been experimenting with a series of small one of a kind prints using a combination of existing and purpose cut blocks.

This print is made from two of my recent pollarded willow trees. The waves come from a block I made in 1995 (!) and the land under the trees comes from an envelope of blocks that never were completed as prints (it was fun going through those rejected blocks - not all of them were bad at all). The background block is one that I tend to use over and over and is the inspiration for the name of this print - Misty Day 2 (the first Misty Day sold too quickly for me to blog about it).

All in all, I like the freedom this random method gives me and I have made about 30 or so of these prints so far. Not all of them are willow trees!

Hassium

Hassium was synthesized in 1984 in Darmstadt Germany by Peter Armbruster, Gottfried Munzenberg et al. Atoms of lead were bombarded with ions of iron with a linear accelerator to produce Hassium. It is classified as a transition metal and its appearnce is unknown, but assumed to be silvery white or metallic grey. It is highly radioactive. The name Hassium comes from the Latin for the German State of Hesse where Darmstadt is located.

This information was not a lot to go on, but as you can see I managed. By combining the (old) symbol for radioactivity, with a portion of the Hesse Coat of Arms (rampant lion) and a Gothic style font (Germanic in feel) I came up with my version of the element Hassium for the Periodic Table Printmaking Project.