I’m still catching up on all the stuff I wasn’t able to work on while off-line, but I’ve been up since 3.30am, so I am going to take a break and talk about lino prints, for a while…
The prints you see to the left are the first lino cuts I’ve done since high school (but if you click here, you’ll see I’ve been experimenting with eraser-carving & relief printing with other random household stuff). Â I started off with pencil drawings (something else I’ve not done since school!), then transfer-rubbed the image onto lino, and went over lines with a black Sharpie.
It all went very smoothly, and unlike my first eraser-carvings, I managed not to stab myself (or at least draw blood!) once. Â As you can see from the prints, I didn’t worry too much about how ‘clean’ the backgrounds are, as I don’t think a print should look like a pen & ink drawing. Â I like to leave ‘movement’ lines in the background, so that you can see it has been hand-carved; otherwise, what’s the point? Â I carve away the background working outwards from the central motif, so any remaining marks echo the flow of the drawing. Â
All 3 of these prints are used as illustrations in my zine, ‘On Flowers and Fairy Tales’. Â I used a combination pigment ink stamp pads & pens for the colour, and although it would have been nice to achieve the slightly raised effect of ‘proper’ printing inks, I think they came out quite well. Â As a collection of illustrations, & as my first real lino experiments, I’m quite pleased with them. Â At the same time, I don’t really feel as though the prints look like they belong to me – there’s nothing that says ‘me’ in the style of them – so that’s something I wanted to address in my next attempts.
After my very brief flirtation with Zentangling, I doodled some postcards, reminiscing over a type of doodle I used to do all the time (I don’t doodle so much, now I do all my writing on the pc). Â (Do you see the kangaroo in the top doodle? Â It might only be apparent to me… Â It certainly wasn’t intentional!)
When my next inclination to carve a new lino print occurred, the seed of inspiration had been sown. Â Although once it was carved and printed, I realised that my doodles have been subconsciously influencing my creative output for longer than I have realised. Â Do you see the resemblance to my tapestries…?
My next lino project followed a similar course, and I am far
happier with both of these as representative of my ‘style’.  They feel a lot more me…  (And I love the potential ambiguity this last lino-cut – is it an ear of corn?  a head of lavender? layered slices of onion…?)  It’s funny, but I wouldn’t have even said I had a style until I started looking at my  doodles, yet there it is, everywhere!
Anyway, I think that’s about all I have to say, just now 🙂