Blencathra from Castlerigg Stone Circle

Finally finished and editioned the Blencathra mezzotint. Just in time to get it mounted and framed ready for Printfest in Ulverston on 5th and 6th May.

Blencathra from Castlerigg

200mm x 300mm

Mezzotint

Edition of 20

I have been working on this print on and off since last October and finally finished the platework and printed the edition over the last couple of days. I thought it would be interesting to know just how long it would take so I kept an accurate record of just how much time I spent working on it.

Grounding the plate with 24 passes of the rocker took 30 hours
Preliminary drawing took 3.5 hours
Drawing the design on the plate took 2.75 hours
Engraving the design on the plate took a further 160.5 hours, this time including printing a number of impressions at various stages to check progress on the platework.

Finally printing 23 impressions for the edition took 13.5 hours.

A total time of 210.25 hours, something of a surprise as the general impression that I had was that I'd spent a lot longer on it. This time was spread out over 6 months so I wasn't working continuously on just this one print. To put this in context, assuming a standard working week of 40 hours this would have taken a little over 5 weeks of continuous work.

Castlerigg - 2

Got up early this morning and printed two impressions from the plate to get an idea of how much more work is needed.

The plate, inked, wiped and positioned on the bed of the press.

1st Impression

2nd Impression

Overall pretty much what I was expecting, still quite a lot of the plate needs to be lightened. The whole sky area needs brightening up especially the clouds above the top of the fell. The wisps of mist sweeping off the summit need to be blended back into the clouds. Although I want to keep the area in the top left quite dark to act as a foil to balance the dark line of spruce trees in the lower right. The two foreground rocks need more work to bring out the texture in the stone and I haven't yet decided what to do with the dark shadow areas running across the foreground.

Castlerigg Mezzotint - The Begining.

The start of a new mezzotint print. From the original water colour sketch I made a tonal pencil study  which I then scanned and printed off in reverse ready for transferring to the plate. The plate had been rocked with an 84 gauge Lyons rocker in 24 directions with a 50% overlap, about 36 hours work in total. At 200mm x 300mm this is the largest mezzotint I've attempted so far.

The location for the study is the Castlerigg Stone Circle in the Lake District looking north towards Blencathra.

The original watercolour sketch

Tonal study in pencil and ink wash

The study scanned and printed in reverse

Transferred on to the copper plate

Starting the plate work.

Blea Gill - Mezzotint

I started a new mezzotint just before Christmas, beginning work on putting the image on to the plate the first week in December. By mid January the plate was at a stage where I needed to take an impression just to give me an idea of how it would look like printed. On the plate the image looks quite well defined, however this is very misleading as can be seen on the 1st state impression, which is still very dark and on paper not as well defined as the plate image would suggest.

Plate at state i

Image at state i
The image is very dark and with little definition. The sky is starting to take shape and while the waterfall is clear it needs more burnishing to bring out the highlights on the water.

Image at state ii

Image at state iii
More work on the sky, a combination of scraping and burnishing back the burrs is starting to define the clouds and veils of mist sweeping down the valley towards the waterfall.

Image at state iv
Slowly pulling out and sharpening up the image. At this stage the image is almost ready to edition. The cliff to the left of the waterfall needs to be lightened up, it is supposed to be sunlit! The clouds need to be lightened in parts to break up the uniform grey tone.

Tynemouth

This is an image that I've been playing around with for the last couple of years. I've already tried to make a linocut of it twice and failed, so now I'm trying a mezzotint. Grounding of the plate began in early April and took a couple of weeks work. Since then I've been working on the plate intermittently between printing linocut editions.

Starting from a tonal pencil drawing taken from my original pen field sketch. I scanned the sketch and printed it off in reverse (above). From this I began working on the plate. Gradually scraping away the ground to reveal the lighter areas.

1st state impression. This proof reveals the basic image although one with much work still to do. Overall it is still very dark. The breakers and beach need much more work as does the cloudscape above the castle.

After a bit more scraping and burnishing I took another impression. Already there is a big difference from the 1st impression but there is still much to do. Gradually though the image is starting to come together. The waves breaking on the beach need to be better defined but I'm pleased with the way it is going.

Latest works

Been a bit quiet on the posting front  lately but here is a selection of the finished and works in progress so far.

Pendragon Castle, Mallerstang.

Reduction Linocut. 

18 colours printed in 9 stages

Edition of 10

Mezzotint plate in progress. I've been working on this plate on and off since the end of April. I think I've gone as far as I can now and need to take a print from it, to see if what I think is on the plate, translates on to paper. Once I have an impression taken I'll be able to see which areas need further work.

1st stage of a new linocut, a 3 colour blend from top to bottom of warm and cool grey through to a darker warm grey.

Sgurr an Fheadain

Sgurr an Fheadain

Mezzotint

200mm x 150mm

Finally started to edition this mezzotint. Decided to print with a blend of Prussian blue and green rather than just black and really pleased with the atmosphere in the print. Its a slow process though, after 3 hours of inking, wiping and printing  I have 8 prints nicely drying off. I'm not sure of the edition size yet though as I don't know how many prints I will get before the plate starts to degrade.

Multi-tasking

It's not often that I have 3 projects on the go at the same time but for once I've been juggling images around. The Fountains Abbey print is now completed.

Fountains Abbey

10 colour reduction linocut

252mm x 342mm

Edition of 8

The new mezzotint is almost finished. Just a few little tweaks and it will be ready to edition.

and I've begun work  on the next linocut

Doesn't look much at the moment, just  a blended roll from grey through buff to blue grey.

These next couple of weeks are relatively quiet before the rush of November which is looking to be quite busy. I'm at Masham Town Hall on the 1st for the Crafted by Hand fair. The Corn Exchange in Leeds on the 7th for Leeds Print Fair, teaching a two day workshop at Malham Tarn for the Field Studies Council the following weekend. At Buxton in the Peak District on the 21st and 22nd for the Artists and Designers Fair and finally back to Holmfirth on the 29th for the Art Market. Then it will be time to knuckle down and really get on with making some new work ready for next year.

The moment of truth

 After working on this mezzotint plate on and off for the last couple of months it's time to see what we have.

The messy bit

 

Wiping the plate

Ready to print

Well we've got something. For a first proof I'm quite happy with this. It's still too dark and needs a lot more work on it, but at this stage it's better to be too dark than too light.

Blea Water - Mezzotint

Drying nicely. An edition of new mezzotint prints freshly printed and hot off the press.

Blea Water from Long Stile

Mezzotint

100mm x 150mm

Edition of 10 plus 2 Artists Proofs.

This small print is based on a sketch done way back in the autumn of 1996. I had spent a day sketching my way around the Riggindale Horseshoe in the Lake District. Starting from the car park at the head of Haweswater, I crossed the end of Riggindale and climbed up onto Kidsty Pike. From there I crossed on to High Street by way of the Straits of Riggindale, had lunch sitting just below the summit cairn looking down the length of Haweswater reservoir. Descending by way of Long Stile. The late afternoon sun behind Mardale Ill Bell cast a deep shadow down the flanks of the fell and across the still, blue waters of the tarn.

Finished just in time to dry off ready to take to this weekends Printmakers Art Fair in Chester. The start of a busy couple of weeks. The following weekend on 14th June I will be at Holmfirth Art Market and the weekend after on 20th and 21st June at Carlisle Auction Mart for Art in the Pen.

Mezzotint

After some weeks of dithering I have finally begun working on the mezzotint plate that I had finished preparing about 6 weeks ago. There is so much time and effort that goes into rocking the plate, that I am reluctant to commit to working on it until I am sure about what I am going to do. This is only a small 100mm x 150mm plate but it still took 12 hours to rock it completely.

This is the state of play after a couple of hours scraping and burnishing. It's quite difficult to get the lighting right so that it shows up in the photograph but I think you'll get the idea.

After a  bit more burnishing I ran off a proof.

Clearly a bit more work is needed.

New Work

Had quite a productive couple of days. With the first of this years art fairs coming up at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield in two weeks time I need to get some new work done.

First of all I've got a couple of colours down on a new Linocut.

 Block cut and inked for the first colour. There has been quite a bit of carving done already as this print will have a lot of white areas in it.

 First colour printed.

 After a bit of cutting, block inked for the second colour

I could have printed this colour first and then printed the grey. But the next colour is going to be a pale green and that will look much more vibrant on top of the yellow than it would on the grey. Well that's the theory anyway. It should start to make more sense after the next two colours are printed.

After dithering around trying to decide if the mezzotint that I have been scratching and scraping at for the last couple of months was finished. I finally made the decision and printed the edition. I'm still feeling my way around doing mezzotints, this is only my third attempt at one and it's taken a bit of experimenting to get the pressure right on the press and to wipe the plate properly. There is a very fine line between getting it right and wiping too ink much from the plate. But after 7 hours of,  it has to be said, pretty monotonous inking, wiping and printing I now have an edition of 20 prints laid out and drying off nicely.

Time for a beer!

An Image - of sorts

Just in case you were thinking that I'd given up on the Mezzotint and sold the plate in for scrap, here is the first proof. In my usual dis-organised manner I had decided to take on a print that not having a press I couldn't actually print. So thank you to Lisa Moore for pulling these couple of proofs from my plate for me. (Have a look at Lisa's own excellent work by following the link to her website on the right).

So what have we got. Well, considering I haven't got a clue what I am doing, the image is there but it's all very blurry and still very dark in places. (Think badly developed black and white photograph). Actually the bits that I thought I had over burnished on the plate are the darkest parts of  the proof, Which just goes to show how difficult it is to gauge what the printed image will look like from what can be seen on the plate. I suppose this will come with experience.

So it's back to the burnishing to sharpen up the definition and bring out the details in the gate, wall and barn in the middle distance.

Scratching, Scraping and Burnishing

Haven't got a clue if I'm doing this right but something seems to be happening. I suppose all will be revealed (or not) when I get to the proofing stage. It's very hard to tell if I've scraped back enough or not enough so it is impossible to even guess how it will print. I'm beginning to wish that I had picked a less ambitious subject for a first go though. Especially as this is something that I've already tried and failed to do as a linocut.

Embracing the Dark Art

These arrived this morning.

Two nice and shiny copper plates. Now I just need to work out how to use this...