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.

Lindisfarne

Above the tide line - Lindisfarne
Reduction Linocut
245mm x 360mm
Edition size 9. ( Started with 10 but lost one due to sloppy registration)

Finished the print with the addition of the final colour. Not sure how to describe this though. It was printed in 11 stages, but counting all the colours used in the blends there are actually 20 colours on it. Anyway there is much in this print that I am pleased with, particularly the treatment of the foreground grasses which I would like to develop in future prints. As usual there are a couple of areas I'm not so happy about, but overall it has come out pretty much as I hoped.

For anyone interested in purchasing a print it can be found here

All that is left of the block.

Lindisfarne print - nearly there.

The block inked with the 6th colour. Another blend from blue grey to green.

and printed. This has made the colour of the boat sheet too dark and grey in tone, so the next colour will be printed just as a correction to this.

Colour 7. A blue, slightly darker in tone than the darkest blue in the sky.

The block inked for colour 8.

and printed. Another, darker blue.

 Colour 9. A brown for the upper paintwork on the boat.

and colour 10. Some darker details. One more colour will see it finished.

New Print

Started this print last week but for one reason and another progress has been interrupted. Another few days of concentrated work should see it finished in time for the Printmakers Art Fair at Chester on 6th June.

 Colour 1.
A blended roll top to bottom from cream through cool grey and back to cream.

 Colour 2.
A second blend top to bottom from blue grey to a warm mauve grey.

 Colour 3.
A third blended roll, top to bottom from blue through light blue to pale green. This finishes off the sky area.

 Colour 4.
A light blue printed across the bottom of the print. This finishes the patch of sea in front of the castle and gives the highlights on the sheeting covering the boat.

Colour 5.
Another blend across the bottom of the print, from mauve grey through bright green to a darker green.
By now the location should have become apparent.

Cliffs near Llangrannog

North from Llangrannog
13 colour reduction linocut
274mm x 357mm
Edition of 9

Finished the linocut with the addition of a final dark to bring out the structure of the bedding planes in the rocks.

Nearly Finished

Colour 8, a dark purple grey, the  base colour for the shadowed area of rocks.

Colour 9 is a dark blue for the shadowed areas of the far headland only.

Colour 10, another dark grey.

Colour 11. A dark green for the shadowed foreground grasses.

Colour 12, a second darker grey.
One final dark to go now to bring out the detail in the structure of the rocks.