(not so) mellow yellow

 
We are surrounded by oilseed rape at the moment and the air is thick with the smell of it. Even at dusk this yellow crop has a strange luminosity. I feel sure that even if I went cycling at midnight i could find my way to the A1 by the glow of its flowers alone. With so much yellow about I am not sure whether there is a  market for bright yellow lino prints but here they are anyway!

left: Betty's Hen lino print
bottom right: In the Frame - yellow
(top right is a photo, taken across the field up the road with a power station in the background)

Little Bird

This little fella is about to fly off and join the Little Bird flock that is gathering at The Dukes in Lancaster in support of Women for Women International.

He's a 3-D version of my "In the Frame" magpie lino print, mounted on 2 sheets of ply, backed with a lovely magpie-coloured chiyogami, then bonded to a small wedge of foam board covered with the same paper. 

Click on the image below for more information

printing on ply

I've been playing around with printing on different materials and this is my attempt at printing on board, 4mm ply to be precise. I whitewashed the board, hand-painted the flag and then distressed it a little. I then printed my "In the Frame" lino block with the usual black relief print ink. I distressed it a little more and sealed it with a water-based glaze tinted with a little brown drawing ink. I would love to know what you think.

printing printing printing

busy busy busy!

A bit undecided

As I predicted in my last post adding the black to Magpie Tree didn't produce the image in my mind's eye. And now I've lost sight of what I was trying to achieve altogether, though I know it was heavily influence by the feel of this Charlie Harper illustration. I've ended up with 3 versions:


Left....the original orange on white (which I quite like)


Centre....the full black and orange on white (which just screams halloween at me)


Right....where I have cut out a lot more from the black plate

As a warm up for big GE I am inviting your votes, LEFT, CENTRE, RIGHT in the comments box purleeeez (for the image you prefer, not your political persuasions, though you can tell me about those too if you wish) thank you!

Magpie tree (work in progress)

The lino is cut and the first colour is on! Its seems ages since I did any proper printing. I kid myself that other tasks have sucked away all my time (we are at the start of a house move) but really I think apathy has played its part. Anyway it was nice to feel the same excitement when I got the inks out last night and I'm quite please with the result so far, in fact I'm worried now that the next colour might ruin it.  (Does anyone else find  difficult to deal with orange in photo editors, my corel was determined to turn it brown!)