Saturday 8 September 2018
Thursday 7 June 2018
Long Tailed Tit
Long tailed Tit
Drypoint
69mm x 130mm
Edition of 20
A small, quick drypoint made simply, by placing a piece of clear plastic over my original field sketch drawing and scratching the design directly on to the plate.
Tuesday 17 April 2018
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.
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.
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.
Labels:
Blencathra,
Castlerigg Stone Circle,
Lake District,
Mezzotint
Monday 2 April 2018
So much for an Easter Break
Spent all weekend working on the mezzotint plate, printed two impressions and finally the end is in sight. Just a little bit of burnishing needed on the clouds to bring out the highlights and smooth out some of the abrupt tonal transitions and it will be ready to edition.
Labels:
Blencathra,
Castlerigg Stone Circle,
Lake District,
Mezzotint.
Monday 19 March 2018
Hen Harrier - Drypoint
Hen Harrier
Drypoint
67mm x 110mm
A quick little drypoint study of the most persecuted bird in Britain. The plate was made from a piece of clear plastic which I placed over my original pen sketch and scratched through with a drypoint needle.
Sunday 11 March 2018
Some Wildlife - for a change.
Murmuration
15 colour Reduction linocut printed in 9 stages.
190mm x 170mm.
Edition of 9
I've been working on a mezzotint plate for the best part of the last three months, which is still a long way from being ready to print an edition from. So it felt good to spend two weeks making this little linocut and finally getting something completed on paper.
Sunday 11 February 2018
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.
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