The Last Print of the Year

The last couple of days have been spent editioning the mezzotint plate that I have finally finished working on. For those interested in the more technical aspects it's worked on a copper plate rocked in 24 directions with a 2.5 inch wide 65 lines per inch Lyons Rocker. Printed with a mixture of Charcoal Black and Warm Black Inks from Hawthorn Printmakers on 220gsm Fabriano Rosapina paper.

The Last Shadows of Summer

Mezzotint

150mm x 200mm

Edition of 20

A print made in mid winter looking back to the last days of summer.

Stoat

 Another small wood engraving on Boxwood printed on Boxing Day.

Stoat

Wood Engraving

51mm x 54mm

Edition of 20

Roe Deer

 The mezzotint plate that I have been working on for the last couple of months is now ready to edition. However, due to a small stock control issue I've none of the Fabriano Rosapina paper that I use for the mezzotints. So whilst waiting for the order to arrive I engraved and printed this little wood engraving instead. Based on some sketches made back in March of one of a group of 4 deer feeding along the edge of a field close to my home.

Printed with Hawthorn Printmakers Dense Black Ink on 145gsm Zerkall Smooth paper.

First Steps

 This week I've started work on a new mezzotint working on a plate 150mm x 200mm. My starting point is this pencil drawing of an old pathway dappled by shadows. Should work well as a mezzotint I think. I'd laid the ground on the copper plate months ago and then put it to one side. I couldn't at the time, come up with an image that I was confident would work well and justify the amount of time I would need to spend working on it.

After completing the pencil rough the next step was to scan it into my laptop, flip it horizontally 180 degrees and print it out. Although this is an actual place there is no obvious recognisable focal point or subject matter, so reversing it isn't strictly necessary but I would like the final print to be as I conceived my original drawing. Once printed out I transferred the reversed copy to my copper plate using typewriter carbon paper.

The original drawing is top left, the reversed copy top right and I'm just starting to work on the dappled highlights between the tree branches. These are the lightest areas of the print and I want them to print as clean paper so will take the most scraping and burnishing. Once I have established these I can work back through the mid tones to the areas that I'll leave untouched and will print as black. Months of work to go yet.

Hitting a Wall

 It's been a bit of a frustrating month since our summer holiday. I've made two attempts at a linocut of the lighthouse at Spurn Head and both attempts have ended up in the bin. The first abandoned after about 5 colours and the second after two colour passes. I'll return to the subject and give it another go as there is definitely a print there but I need a couple of months distance, to come back to it with fresh eyes.

So in the meantime I've been playing around with my sample endgrain wood blocks and engraved a couple of little prints.

Towards Bacton Church

22mm x 76mm

Engraved on Lemonwood.

Based on a recent sketch made on the Norfolk coast, looking across the wheat fields from near Paston to the church in the village of Bacton.

The Te Deum Stone, Withens Gate, Calderdale.

45mm x 39mm

Engraved on Maple Wood.

An incised marker stone probably dating from the late medieval times which stands beside the packhorse route which crosses the moor between Mankinholes and Cragg Vale in the Calder Valley. The latin inscription; Te Deum Laudamus translates as "we praise thee O Lord."

Experiments with Wood Engraving

 Earlier this year I made some engravings on Resingrave, a substitute matrix for wood engravings. I wasn't really satisfied with the surface and found it difficult to work, so I ordered a practice pack of assorted end grain blocks from Chris Daunt. Over the last few weeks I have been slowly working through the various blocks with some positive results. There is still much to learn and my mark making is still a little crude, the medium demands a much more delicate touch than cutting the lino that I am more used to. It does however fit well with my mezzotint work. Although producing totally different looking images both methods require the same mindset in working. Essentially with both methods you are drawing with light rather than trying to build up the darks in the image. Both an untouched endgrain block and a freshly prepared mezzotint plate print as black. Any work done on them creates the light areas in the image. 

So these are the results so far:

Stonechat

Wood Engraving on Maple Wood

42mm x 38mm

Printed on 220gsm Fabriano Rosapina

Hawthorn Printmakers Dense Black Ink

White Owl

Wood Engraving on Maple Wood

60mm x 27mm

Printed on 145gsm Zerkall Smooth

Hawthorn Printmakers Dense Black Ink

Lligwy Cromlech

Wood Engraving on Lemonwood

30mm x 69mm

Printed on 145gsm Zerkall Smooth

Hawthorn Printmakers Dense Black Ink

Holiday Sketches

 Just back from a week in Norfolk, although a family holiday I did manage to get a few sketches done for future reference.

Happisburgh Lighthouse - Watercolour

Figs in the cottage garden - Pen and Ink and Watercolour

Cormorant perched on a groyne - Watercolour - and pen sketches of a Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly

Groyne - Pen and Ink

Quiet Lane near Paston - Watercolour

Knapton Church tower - Watercolour

Sailing Boat on Horsey Mere - Pen and Ink

Red Admiral Butterfly - Horsey Mere - Watercolour

Cut wheatfield near Mundesley with quick sketch of a startled Chinese Water Deer - Pen and Ink

Paston Great Barn - the sketch that didn't work - Pen and Ink

and the one that did - 2nd attempt - Pen and Ink

Grey Seal - Horsey Gap - Pencil and Watercolour

Fossils and Flints - Pen and Ink and Watercolour

Towards Bacton Church - Watercolour

Partly cut Wheatfield near Paston Villlage - Watercolour

Paston Church - Pen and Ink

Up North Printmakers 3rd Annual Exhibition

Something to whet the appetite:

Where seven streams fall. 

Mezzotint. 

Stuart Brocklehurst.

One of the new works in the exhibiton.

Although the current situation is fluid and challenging to say the least, we are still hopeful that the planned Annual Exhibition of Up North Printmakers will be able to go ahead. Members have been busy throughout the spring and summer and have lots of new work to show. As usual there will be a variety of techniques on show; Etchings, Linocuts, Woodcut,Collograph, Monoprints, Wood Engravings and Mezzotint.

As with previous years, in addition to members of the group we also invite a special guest artist to exhibit with us. Usually a personal friend of group members or a printmaker who's work we admire. This year we are especially pleased to welcome our friend, collograph virtuoso Hester Cox to exhibit with us.

https://www.hestercox.com/

Once again we are hoping that Hawthorn Printmakers will be joining us on Sunday 13th September, an opportunity for local printmakers to stock up on supplies.

UP NORTH PRINTMAKERS 3rd ANNUAL EXHIBITION

Higherford Mill Studios

Gisburn Road

Barrowford

Lancashire

BB9 6JH

Friday 11th - Sunday 13th September 2020

https://en-gb.facebook.com/HigherfordMill/

Skipper

Another small linocut based on Butterfly sketches made this summer. A Small Skipper Butterfly.

Small Skipper

8 colour Reduction Linocut

136mm x 80mm

Edition of 20

Another one for the Lepidopterists

Magpie Moth

8 colour reduction linocut

Edition of 19

131mm x 86mm

Over the years I've managed to collect a lot of offcuts of lino. Being too small to use for my normal editions but too big to justify being thrown away I had just kept them in a box until I could think of a use for them. The good weather of the last few months has been very good locally for butterflies so consequently I've spent a lot of the time I've been out of the studio sketching them, thinking that I could use up these small offcuts of lino on a series of Butterfly prints. Although this Magpie Moth is based on a sketch made about 5 years ago at Llanrhystud in Mid-Wales - so not recent and certainly not local.

Tigermoth

I completed this little print yesterday evening, based on a sketch I made about 5 years ago in north Somerset. Not being much of an entomologist, I'm OK on Butterflies and Dragonflies but that is about it. This one had me stumped at first. I knew enough to recognise it as some sort of Tiger Moth but that it wasn't the familiar Garden Tiger. A bit of research eventually identified it as a Jersey Tigermoth at a location that is about as far north as they get in the British Isles.

Jersey Tigermoth

7 Colour Reduction Linocut

144mm x 144mm

Beadnell Bay

The last two days have been spent editioning this mezzotint. Once I'd settled into the rhythm of inking wiping and printing I managed a rate of 4 an hour.

Beadnell Bay

Mezzotint

100mm x 150mm

Edition of 40

Back to the North East

Delving back to sketches drawn on holiday last summer for this next print and a reworking in mezzotint of a subject that I have already made a linocut of.

Dunstanburgh Castle from Beadnell Harbour.
Mezzotint  - 1st State Impression 1.

A bit of tidying up to do. All the white areas need to be burnished back  and the sky around the castle needs to be blended back more subtly into the clouds.

Blackcap

An old friend of mine, a poet, often sends his letters prefaced by a wonderful Haiku. The imagery suggested in a recent one about a singing Blackcap, was the influence behind this engraving of the bird. Cut last week and printed yesterday in an edition of 30.

Blackcap

Engraving on Resingrave

127mm x 102mm

Woodcock

It's been a while since I made a linocut print so the last three days have been spent cutting and printing this little reduction print of a Woodcock in it's roding flight at dusk.

Woodcock Roding

Reduction Linocut (11 colours printed in 7 passes)

190mm x 170mm

Edition of 8

Where Seven Streams Fall

Finally finished the platework on the new mezzotint and after two days editioning the plate I now have a stack of 20 impressions dried between blotting paper.

Where Seven Streams Fall

Mezzotint

200mm x 300mm

Edition of 20

This is Lumb Falls in Crimsworth Dene, a small valley which runs down off the moor to join the Calder Valley at Hebden Bridge. About 10 miles as the crow flies up the valley from where I am writing this. The bridge in the background (a worthy subject in it's own right) carries the old Packhorse Route from Burnley to Halifax across the beck.

Just before the First World War a group of local men sat on the rocks between the two waterfalls and posed for a photograph. Many years later the poet Ted Hughes came across the photo and wrote a poem called Six Young Men, a line from the poem gave me the idea for the title. The poem can be read in full here

The print is available from my on-line shop here

Last Chance to Buy

Just before the world turned out the lights and closed the doors I collected some unsold prints from a number of galleries. Having only just got around to unpacking them I now have a couple of prints that I had thought were sold out. I have relisted them on my on line shop as below.

Into the Gathering Dusk.
Linocut
1 Available here

Song of Evening
Linocut
2 Available here

Back to the Mezzotint

After working on the mezzotint plate over the last week, I've taken another impression. Apart from a little more burnishing on the white water in the foreground I think that this is now ready to edition.

Mezzotint - 3rd State Impression 1. 200mm x 300mm.

Something Different

The mezzotint that I have been working on for the last month (see previous posts) is now at the critical stage where I need to think carefully about which areas I work on more and which I leave alone. I don't want to overwork it, so I've put it aside for a while and spent a couple of days cutting this small engraving.

As I don't have a book binding press to print with, I made a false bed from a piece of MDF the same thickness as the wood block so that I can run it through my etching press.

Strictly speaking it's not a wood engraving as it has been worked on a plastic substitute called Resingrave which I bought from TN Lawrence printmaking supplies.

Falco peregrinus

Engraving on Resingrave

126mm x 102mm

Edition of 50

£50.00 unframed. 

Available here

2nd State Proof

After working the plate for a couple of weeks after taking the first proof I'm now ready to take a second. So I was up early this morning and got the inks out. Having only limited space in my studio I'm not able to have dedicated clean and inky areas so I have to be more careful with keeping things apart. My usual work bench serves also as my inking and wiping table. My hot plate sits on a portable table and my waterbath sits beside my press table.

Inked Plate ready for wiping

The wiped plate on the bed of the press

 State II - Impression I

Much more progress now from the first proof I took (see the previous post). As I suggested I wasn't happy with the drawing of the ferns on the right hand side so I re-rocked this part of the plate and redrew them. They still need some more work to highlight the areas catching the dappled sunlight but I am now more pleased with the way that they are looking. The mid-tones on the bridge and area above the waterfalls I am ok with. The main areas for further work are now just on the water. The white water of the falls needs to be burnished much more so that they print as white rather than the dirty grey that they appear. I'm also not sure what to do with the sky - leave it as it is or burnish it paler. Time to put it aside, go out and mow the lawn and then come back to it later with fresh eyes.