Loch Linnhe

(converted to greyscale from original sepia ink)

A week of views across Loch Linnhe, I could have sat, sketched, painted and photographed all day and all night.

Cowichan Bay, Vancouver Island

Cowichan Bay - an original lino print in sage green

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On our travels around Vancouver Island we stopped by the small town of Cowichan Bay for a quick coffee and a nosy round. I really liked the feel of this quirky little place with its stilted, shoreline stores and homes, floating houses and row upon row of moored boats. The shoreline up to the mouth of the Cowichan River is studded with tall wooden piles and I loved the way some had been customised as bird boxes and feeders and weather vanes. Cowichan Bay is also the home of the Arthur Vickers Gallery (unfortunately shut during our fleeting visit) and the True Grain Bread bakery (luckily, very much open with its fantastic selection of breads and yummy spelt cookies).  

 I've posted a few photos below to remind me that we did see blue sky once or twice!

Links you might like

http://www.cowichanbay.com/
http://arthurvickers.com/gallery/
http://www.truegrain.ca/

Leaving Saltery Bay

Finished at last, the first of a series of prints I have planned from my recent travels around Vancouver. This was the view from the ferry that links the Sunshine Coast down to the city as it left Saltery Bay. This is clearly a commuter route because we were the only travellers out on the deck gawping at the landscape, all the regulars were hunkered down inside with coffee, phones and papers. I'd give up home working for a commute like that. Better still would be to make the trip by float plane as many do, though I am sure the novelty would wear off eventually.

I broke my own "no reduction" rule for this and printed four colours on two different papers. As you can see from the wee film below I cheated somewhat on the second colour by isolating that small background area for printing. I printed a small number on my preferred Zerkall paper, but the two or more layers of ink dries so slowly on these that I printed the rest of the edition on a lightweight tissue (whose names escapes me). This had the great advantage of taking the ink very easily with only a slight rub with a baren - no endless bending over the press :-). I am finishing the prints chine colle-style by bonding them to a heavier weight paper. I like the way the tissue "disappears" and the ink really pops.

 Leaving Saltery Bay - available here  and here

Mountain

I had a quick play around with some of my wooden type the other night. I haven't managed to track down a chase yet  (that's the bit that keeps the whole arrangement together and stops the letter blocks moving during inking and pressing) so I improvised with an old flat-fronted picture frame. It did the job & was a good size for the plates on my press but I am not sure how long it will stay together under repeated use. Anyway here is the result. I love all the dings and scratches in the bottom capital M, and eagle-eyed experts can probably tell that the top M is in fact an inverted W, I did warn you it would be criminal.

PS if anyone knows what the middle type is please let me know, I am a few letters short and thinking of trying to cut them from lino or ply but need a reference, Ta.