Slow Start

I've been struggling for ideas for the last couple of months and the old year kind of ground to a halt in a pile of half finished and then abandoned images. At the end of last summer I finished grounding a new mezzotint plate but since then I haven't started any work on it. I just can't come up with a suitable subject or image that I feel inspired enough by, to commit to for long enough to finish the engraving. So earlier this month I packed my sketching bag and went down to St Aidens for a days drawing. This hasn't immediately resulted in a new print but it has got me working in a positive vein again.

Great Crested Grebe. Pencil and Watercolour

Male Stonechat. Pencil and Watercolour

Glossy Ibis. Pen and Ink

Glossy Ibis. Pen and Ink

Glossy Ibis. Pencil and Watercolour

Great White Egret. Pencil and Watercolour

Great White Egret. pencil and Watercolour

Great White Egret. Pencil and Watercolour

Little Egret. Pencil and Watercolour

The view south across the reedbeds. St Aidens. Pencil and  Watercolour.

Back in the studio I stuck a piece of engravers plastic onto an mdf block and working from an old pen and ink scraperboard drawing of a Dipper. Made this little 75mm x 100mm engraving.

Engraved and inked block

Dipper

75mm x 100mm

Plastic Engraving.

Edition of 50

Printed on some of my last remaining sheets of Zerkall smooth paper.

The Last King in Riggindale

 It's been a while since I last handprinted a linocut and I'd forgotten how much of a workout it can be. This linocut, a reworking of a much smaller wood engraving is too big to go through my press so it was back to the baren and a wooden spoon. In six hours I managed to print 11 impressions, although I think only 8 of them are good enough to sign and number at this stage so I'll need another session later to print up the number required for the edition. I was planning 20 but I think I'll settle for 10, unless I can get access to a press with a bed big enough to take an A2 sheet of paper.

The Last King in Riggindale

Linocut.

298mm x 421mm

The title refers to the Lake District valley that was the site of the last breeding pair of Golden Eagles in England. 

Exhibition News

 I was pleased to receive a  notification earlier today that my two submissions to the Calderdale Open Art Exhibition have been accepted. The exhibition which runs from the 30th September to the 9th April is held at the Smith Art Gallery in Brighouse, West Yorkshire. Despite the fact that the gallery is in my home town this will be the first time that I have exhibited my work there since I was 7 or 8 years old, when I had a painting of a Hull Trawler shown there in an exhibition of local school childrens art. The only thing I remember about this being visiting the exhibition with my parents and getting really upset because the gallery had labelled the work as the Fighting Trip rather than the Fishing Trip as I had titled it. Anyway the two accepted works are the mezzotints below and as they are both signed and titled below the image there shouldn't be any problems this time.

Where Seven Streams Fall

Sylvan Cathedral

In other news I will be at the Hebden Bridge Print Fair at the Town Hall on the 23rd and 24th September. Local for me, it makes a nice change to only have to travel a couple of miles up the valley from my home. Further afield, I have been invited to take part in Great Print 9 at the Rheged Centre in Penrith, Cumbria. This exhibition runs from the 8th December to 3rd March.

New Prints

 I have been working on a number of images all of which have over the last couple of days come to completion and been editioned.

Badger

Wood Engraving

30mm x 70mm

Golden Eagle 

Wood Engraving

23mm x 72mm

Sylvan Cathedral

Mezzotint

200mm x 300mm

Ink, Wipe, Print - Repeat

 Got up this morning and began to edition the new mezzotint. After around 7 hours working managed 10 impressions.

Two attempt and still can't take a decent photo of the print

Prospect Studios Mezzotint Workshop

 Weather wise it's been a pretty miserable weekend with two days of non-stop heavy rain making the rivers run high with brown peat stained water. So what better way to spend the weekend than teaching a mezzotint workshop in good company at my favourite studio, run by Alan Birch at Waterfoot in Rossendale. Just an hours drive over the moors from home. With a mixture of artists, some of whom had been on my previous workshops there and some others making their first mezzotint prints it's been a thoroughly enjoyable two days with some really stunning results.

3rd State

 I took two impressions this evening from the current mezzotint plate in progress. Ist impression at the top, 2nd at the bottom. Printed the 2nd impression with a little more pressure so combined with the better inking it's a crisper image, although you wouldn't believe that from the dodgy photo. Trust me it is. 

Almost there now just some tidying up to do in parts then it will be ready to edition and show at Art in the Pen in August.

Hawthorn Printmakers Charcoal Black ink. 

220gsm Fabriano Rosapina.

Image 200mm x 300mm