The Stag and the Moon - Finished

Here’s a final print of ‘The Stag and the Moon’ and a drawing stage photo of a new watercolour ‘St Peter’s Church Eynsham’.
I’ve used silver and aluminium leaf on the stag prints which was an interesting experience…printing with gilding size is a sticky business…:)

The Stag and The Moon - Outline Print

I’ve been doing some work on one of the ‘Stag’ linocuts today. Here you can see where I’ve refined the lines of the drawing, transferred it onto the block, carved the block and finally a test print. There’ll be another block for the background colour, more of that later :)

Stags - Design

Here are some designs for new linocuts I’m going to do. They all need a little more refining before I transfer them on to the lino blocks but I thought I’d post them at this stage so you can see how the ideas develop. I want to get the design of the stag the same on each block and I did ‘The White Stag’ first so that one needs the most work to pull him into line with the others. I’m going to try and print one of the colours on these prints using silver…which should be an interesting experiment :)

On a related note, I’m teaching a couple of ‘Introduction to Lino cutting’ classes. If you’re interested, further information can be found HERE :)

Artweeks 2010

I’ll be exhibiting some paintings at Arts Inc as part of their Artweeks 2010 exhibition. 22nd – 31st May 2010. They’ll be a dozen fabulous artists exhibiting a variety of works, so pop in and take a look if you get the chance. :)

The Girl Who Could Read Flowers - Carving

A bit quiet on the art front lately, but have been doing a little work on this linocut so thought I’d post some progress…

The Girl Who Could Read Flowers - first block

Here’s the next lino design. It’s called “The girl who could read flowers”. I drew the original design for this way back in 2007 and it got put to one side because of the number of colours I was going to need to print. I’ve reworked it a little and think I can get the effect I want in 5 prints so I’ve transferred the design onto a new block and it’s a now all ready to be carved.

In The Forest

Here’s a final print. Lots of detail in this one so it took a long time to carve, but I think the end result has been worth it…I now find myself wanting to order some much larger lino blocks and make things even more complex lol ;) I think I’ll do a few more at this scale first though. Would be nice to get a small set together for Artweeks…Anyway, hopefully this is an image people will find both beautiful and curious…make of it what you will :)

In The Forest - first colour print

Here’s the first colour print, bad photo, but it’s too dark and snowy to go out and take a good one. This now needs a couple of days to dry and then I can print the black over the top and that’ll be this one done :)

In The Forest - test print

Finished the first block, here’s a test print which I’ve then transferred to the second block and then marked up. Once this one is all cut we’ll be ready for printing.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Sketches

I’ve been doing a lot of scribbles for possible future linocuts/paintings of late. Usually while sat in the pub having a pint or two…I like sketching in pubs, I’m not sure if it’s because I was partly brought up in a pub, but I find them very safe, comfortable places to be with your inner thoughts…I don’t think it’s entirely due to the beer ;)…something to do with the smells and sounds…anyway, I thought I’d post a few pages from my sketch book…you may or may not see some of these appear in some form or other in 2010 :)

In case anyone is wondering the ‘In the Forest’ linocut is still progressing, albeit somewhat slowly…I think a couple more carving sessions should see it done, so perhaps we’ll get a first print this side of Christmas ;)

On vaguely related note, I’ve got one of the ‘Floating’ prints in Art Jericho as part of the Oxford Art Society’s Winter Show. Had a very nice little mention in the Oxford Times – “Graham Rice’s linocut Floating is a powerful study of twisted bodies in a boat moving towards what might be paradise. It’s a great picture. ”

…Floating towards paradise was exactly what this piece was about, so that was lovely to read :)

You can read the full article here.

Mirrors and wine...

I’m about half way across the lino block now, nothing wildly exciting to post, but I thought I’d take this snap to show the way I’m using a mirror as I’m carving. When I transferred the original design to the lino block it was reversed. By standing a mirror up and looking at my drawing in that, I can see exactly what I should be cutting. As this design is quite detailed this is proving essential, whenever I come to a fiddly bit, I’m checking the drawing in the mirror…then I take a sip of wine… ;)

Other news… Didn’t progress any further in the Little Xmas competition alas, but am looking forward to going to see the exhibition. Had a look around the gallery and studios when I dropped off the picture and both are lovely…would love a studio like one of those…:)…if you’re in that neck of the woods, go take a look…better yet, go and buy something…well done to the winners, very well deserved and a really excellent selection of work across the board :)

In theory tomorrow will be a “Pear” painting day…if so, I’ll post at various stages again so we can see how things develop….positively one hopes :)

And finally, I’m going to change the settings on this blog so you can comment without a Google account. Since installing the ‘Lijit Wijit’ I’ve been fascinated to see where all these people looking at the blog come from…so if you’ve been lurking there in the background, post a comment and say hi….that means you in particular Matthew ;)

In the Forest - first carve

Also started cutting the first ‘In the Forest’ lino block today. I’ve done one of the wolves and a couple of trees. Very intricate so it’s taken quite a while…and I now have very sore fingers…still, no pain, no gain. Carving is going well though and I think I’m getting some nice lines…as always we’ll have to wait for the first print to see if that’s actually the case. :)

In The Forest - marking up 1st lino block

I transferred the ‘In The Forest’ design onto the first lino block this evening. I’ve traced the original drawing and then rubbed that onto the block, then I’ve gone over this with a permanent marker. The combination of the rubbing and thick(ish) tip of the marker means the original sharpness of the drawing has been lost…but very thin lines and fiddly areas have also been removed (or blurred to a mess), so next I shall go over the drawing with a white chinagraph pencil to sharpen things up and fix any confusing areas…hopefully what I then have, will carve well…time will tell :)

In the Forest

Some more work on this lino design today, currently titled “In the Forest”. The next stage will be to transfer this onto the lino block and then start cutting, I’ve left lots of the lines too fine in this drawing, I’ll cut them thicker and then probably do a couple of test prints as I refine them. There’s also a lot of variety of shading in this drawing, particularly the background trees and I did wonder about making those a separate colour to get that depth in the final prints. But I want this to have a very oppressive feeling so I’m going to cut everything you see here as black. The figure, creatures and grass will then have a colour pass, with the background and birch trees remaining white…hope that makes sense ;)

Some work on the next lino design

Have been working on this second lino idea from Wales tonight…while enjoying the Scorpions on Spotify and a couple of glasses of wine...and cider...and scotch…very nearly a perfect evening :) Anyway, it’s starting to come together, still quite a bit to workout on the creatures (wolves/tigers, whatever they are :)) and then a general tidy up will be needed, but all in all good progress :)

Finished...some...

Here’s a final print, I’ve finished about half of them today, need to wait for the second colours to dry before finishing the other half.

I’m really pleased with the way they’ve come out. I think I’ve struck a good balance between a clean print and one that allows the nature of lino to show through, so all the prints have a nice individual feel to them.

Print of second cut

Finished the second cut today and did a quick print on the yellow prints…looks promising so far…

Marking up for second cut...

Have marked up the colour block for its second cut. Will start on that now…

First print...

First print today, couldn’t mix the exact colours I played with on the computer last night but got a couple of nice variations…Yellow, which I’m not sure about, might be a bit dull now it’s dried. Flesh tone, Sage Green(ish) and a Peach colour that I really liked and went a bit mad with when I was mixing…so I now have 33 pieces of paper with some kind of background colour on…we’ll whittle those down as we progress…not really enough space in here for this many prints, far too many cats wanting to sit on things. I shall have to look for a bigger house with space for all the things I need…