Cake

 Someimes the force isn't with you. I attempted a different small print before this. It just didn't work out. My heart wasn't in it and everything I dit to try and fix it just made things worse. So I stopped and binned it. So I was feeling a bit... uninspired.

My wife was wanting me to do something food related for the upcoming Rugby Food Festival. But I couldn't find anything tthatt enthused me. So she gave me a slice of cake and told me to do that. So I doggedly worked through it. I think it's come out ok.. And I got to eat the cake after, so I'm in a much better place now.

Poppies

 We had some huge poppies come up this year. They were nearly as tall as me. I did some crayon drawings back then and moved on. I went back to the drawings and used them as the basis of this woodcut. Just to carry on the theme of flowers.

I'd bought some shina ply a couple of years back to try out and it's taken me until now to give it a go. For sure it's easier to cut than "shed" plywood, but it has a "softer" effect - so I'm not sure if it works out that much different than lino. But still, worth a go.

I printed on some "vintage" paper that a watercolourist had primed. I don't know if the priming was originally pinkish or whether it had aged like that. Anyways, I liked the subtle effect of the brushwork. Interestingly it took a long time for the ink to dry as it had no way to evaporate into the paper...

Sunflower

 

Last weekend was pretty busy and I managed to complete two prints, but didn't have time to post about them. So here they are now.

I had started cutting this one the week before, working from a drawing I did a few weeks ago when the sunflowers were just beginning to open. I like the gnarly look of sunflowers, and at this stage you get a sense of so much packed in there trying to get out. 

I was thinking about the print even as I put pencil to paper. I thought, "I'll cut like this here, like that there..." But even when you do that, the cutting takes you its own direction, and it's still a surprise.