Category Archives: New linocut

Day 4 – Cutting the First Block

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So this view is of London Bridge train station, currently being torn apart in the name of progress. Network Rail in their wisdom have decided to take this beautiful Victorian roof down and replace it with (and I quote directly here) “An eye catching roof-scape, made up of undulating canopies”. Oh dear.
And alas, you won’t be able to see this panorama again either, as the old footbridge between the platforms will be replaced by underground tunnels.
Anyway I’ve had the drawing for this linocut ready for a while now and thought I’d better get going with it as quick as possible – a last hurrah for poor London Bridge Station…..

Day 3 – Planning For Next Week

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This afternoon I’ve been getting to grips with the colour separations of my next linocut (it’s of my favourite station, London Bridge). I find it helpful to get the basic areas sorted out in advance, as I like to see an even distribution of colour over the whole print.
Of course what’s really exciting is what happens when the inks overlay one another – all sorts of unexpected colour combinations start appearing like magic. Using four colours will guarantee lots of surprises (and, let’s be honest here, the odd shock too).
Tomorrow I start the cutting….

New Linocut, Second Thoughts…

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Here is the first rough proof of my new linocut of Liverpool Street Station (dreadful image courtesy of my iPhone). The top skylight and the platforms are left in pale yellow…

And here is the second proof, with the top skylight in blue and the platforms knocked back a bit. I thought I liked it better but now I’m not so sure. I may be back to it after the New Year. Sigh….

From Sketch to Finished Linocut….

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                                        It all starts so innocently with a page from my sketchbook…

                                                       Working on the prep drawing……

                                               Two weeks later, the finished prep drawing…….

                              Tracing the drawing and transferring it to each of the four lino blocks.

                                                    Many, many huge piles of lino cuttings later…….

                                                   The first block is cut and ready to print….

                                                                 And the second…..

                                      And this is the proof with the third block printed….

                                      Finally this is the finished print – Poetry of Departures.

                                  And here it is framed up and ready to go. Never again, I tell you.

New Media Journey Part Two

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I have to say that I well and truly exhausted my meagre writing skills last month, in my definitive research into the more posts = more readers theory. See here for an explanation (of sorts.)
I know that eleven posts in April doesn’t sound a lot but if you compare that to the five I managed to write in March, the measly two in February and the slightly less pathetic four in January, it’s more than double my usual output. Combine that with all the extra tweeting and facebooking I did during the month and no wonder my nerves are shot to pieces…
So, yes my stats have gone up massively, but from an exceedingly low start point, and to be honest, I’m slightly wondering why did I bother?

 

So I’ve decided to mull it over for a while and in the meantime, I’m hard at work, making a new linocut – a companion piece to my last one, Up with the Larks, seen below (34 x 33cms). I can see a new passion coming on for dark stairwells, long shadows and floods of light…..


                                                                                                                                                                

Painting, Printmaking or Both?

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I do like to be able to do both printmaking and painting – I find that one informs the other and I use both to explore a subject; to develop and refine an idea more fully. So once a painting is finished, I may use it as a starting point for a print and sometimes it’s the other way around.

And on a practical note, printmaking is a great way of persuading a gallery to stock your work – a few of your prints in their browser is not as much a risk as giving valuable wall space to a painting. Prints are more affordable in this recession too and the artist has more work available to send out to galleries, open exhibitions, etc., and thus has more opportunities to show.

So I find it enjoyable and advantageous to do both. You know those times when you’re so dispirited that you never want to see another lino block again? Well, you can just put down those cutting tools (try not to throw them out of the window) and turn once again, with a small sigh of relief, to a new white canvas. How lovely, you think, to be able to pick up a brush and enjoy the immediacy of painting (until the inevitable time comes when you never want to see another tube of oil paint again and wistfully recall the pleasures of printmaking…).

So anyway, here is an oil painting of mine (Early Morning, 50x50cms), which I sold at my show ‘From the City to the Suburbs’ at Cambridge Contemporary Art last year. It’s now available as a greetings card.

 After quite a bit of alteration to the original working drawing and a lot of simplification, I started to cut the four blocks – the colours used, in order of printing, were raw umber, crimson, cream (olive green and a lot of white) and monastral blue (as a glaze).

And here is the finished linocut, now called Up With the Larks, and due to be shown at Bankside Gallery during the RE Annual Exhibition next month….

Metroland II

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Here is a new version of my linocut Metroland. It was first shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition nearly three years ago and the edition of 75 sold out in seventy-two hours (those were the days, sigh). Anyway, that’s long enough for the blocks to be sitting around in my studio doing nothing so out they came for another airing. I reversed the printing order of the some of the blocks, did some more cutting, changed the colours (obviously) and, hey presto, Metroland II.

Another Odyssey

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 Here is another linocut I thought I was happy with. That is, until I got to thinking about it. Below is the original version of One Way Ticket, of which I’d editioned ten and then stored in my plan chest.

Then I made the mistake of opening said plan chest and accidentally looking at them.  I found I didn’t like that female figure at all and also, well, where are all the people? Tooting Broadway is a very busy tube station after all……

So with the help of my trusty repair kit, I added three more figures – a couple walking by, hand in hand, and a man striding into the other station entrance. I thought I’d just change the woman in the foreground too – make her hair longer and tone down her top – and add some floor tiles inside. Okay, that’s better….

Hmm – I’m sorry but it’s all so dark. I know, I’ll lighten the sky – make it daytime instead of evening. Oh, and while I’m at it, I’ll change her top again…

 

I still don’t like her top though – let’s try a different pattern – and, well, why not make the sky yellow and the interior of the tube station blue?
No, sorry, I don’t like any of that and what’s more, I’m not sure if it’s not all too crowded now. Perhaps I should take out one of the figures?

Okay, that will have to do – surplus male removed, blue sky and yellow interior re-instated, and I’ve gone with the original top. And if you think this was a lot of work, I can assure you this is an edited version….

Giving It Another Go….(The End)

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Here is the final block, inked up in pale blue and a thin yellow glaze. In the end, I decided to cut it up into sections so that each area could be inked up separately – then I could just push it back together again for printing.
I probably should have cut another block entirely for the yellow but I felt it was important to get the print completed this year.

 

Anyway, here is the final version with the barely visible alterations.
Still, I’m happy with it now- and thanks to all of you who took the trouble to comment on my progress. It’s not easy to view your work with any detachment, especially when you’d been under the impression that you’d finished it once before…..