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.