More work on the fish

Colour 3 on this print, the base colour for the fish, is a monoprint blend of 3 tones dabbed on to the plate with a brush and then printed. Its a bit haphazard and as with any monoprint each one has come out slightly different.

Colour 4 begins to establish the shapes of the fish and adds the lightest tones to the river bed.

Colour 5 and we are adding more colour to the river bed. With the first attempt at this sort of subject matter, I printed the stream bed quite uniformly. With this one I want to give more of an impression of the water deepening towards the top of the print. So I am trying to keep the foreground quite light in tone.

On Line Sales

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A bit more work

Added the second colour onto the print. Not much of this will show in the final work, just a few small patches. Its main function being to 'knock back' the blue, providing a neutral tone onto which the remaining colours can be laid. Regular readers may guess where we are going with this print (if it works!). As it is a more complicated version of an earlier print.

Running Around

Its been a week of running around. Last Sunday we had a drive up the valley to Hebden Bridge to collect the unsold works from the Summer Print Exhibition. It was a very pleasant surprise to find that of the eight prints submitted, four had sold. In a group exhibition, where my work has to compete with that from a lot of other printmakers I would have been happy to have sold one. On wednesday it was over to the Ryburn Gallery in Sowerby Bridge with a copy of the Brown Trout print to replace one that had sold there. This has been a very popular print, there are only two copies remaining, one framed and one unframed both now at the Ryburn Gallery. Yesterday we had a trip to Kendal, to deliver two prints that have been shortlisted for the final selection process for a new exhibition organised by the Brewery Arts Centre.

So not much time for work, just this large rectangle in a nice shade of pale blue. A new print intended for a new (for me) gallery, I will shortly have my work available in the Leeds Craft Centre and Design Gallery but more of that later.

Painting

Loch of the Lowes, Scottish Borders. Acrylic on canvas. 400mm x 500mm.

Haven't finished a painting in ages, so this is a bit of a rarity. You can see how much painting I've done recently by how clean the easel is! I had intended this to be a print (it might still be one yet),

Finished the Hosho test

Dusk.
2 Colour Reduction Linocut. 180mm x 110mm.

Finished this simple two colour print and I'm really pleased with the Hosho paper. Now to try something a little more demanding.

Changing Paper

Up to now all my linocuts have been printed onto smooth Winsor and Newton Cartridge Paper. The paper is quite heavy and it takes quite a lot of effort to handprint onto it and get good colour saturation. So I finally decided to jump in and ordered a batch of Hosho paper. I didn't want to do anything too complicated as a trial so I drew out a simple two colour design.

The first colour printed; a simple dark to light and back to dark blend. I hadn't realised what a difference changing paper would make. I applied far too much pressure with the baren at first and nearly went through the back of the paper. But I'm really pleased with the way the colour laid.