Wednesday 14 October 2009

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 ;)

4 comments:

Lorna said...

I swear that the wolves as giggling!

ian gordon said...

I've been sneaking about in the background for a few weeks, looking at these lino prints. The one of the couple in the boat really brings out the qualities in the process. Great composition, and you've edited the forms really well to accomodate the material.

Questions (You might have answered but I missed if you did):

Are you using a press? Or printing by hand?

And are you using water based or spirit based inks?

The quality suggests "press" and "spirits"...

Unknown said...

Thank you both for the comments :)

Lorna
Hopefully the wolves have a menacing, mocking feeling to them too, laughing AT the figure while they circle around... I didn't want them to appear too evil with fangs etc as that seemed like it would put people off the image. Ideally I want it to appear like a pleasant, pleasing image at first glance and then have the more sinister elements reveal themselves in time...much like a fairytale illustration in fact :)

Ian
I'm actually printing by hand using a roller and the inks are water based (Nerchau printers ink). They're also printed on regular cartridge paper, so nothing at all sophisticated about the process, but that works in the linos favour I think :). I'd love to get a press sometime...for etching actually...but don't get me started on that...the expense, the space...the mess...lol :)

There's quite a bit more fiddly detail going into this one, which I did wonder about refining out of the design (the balance in the boat one worked well I think), but I thought I'd push it further on this one and see how it goes...you don't know until you try as they say and I can always rework it if it all starts going pear shaped :)

ian gordon said...

I'm well impressed then.

I ran an art department for more years than I'll go into, and eventually gave up on lino because I couldn't get on with the water based variety. (Health and safety insisted all screen inks and lino inks had to be water based).

And yes, the really nice thing about the couple in the boat is that they embrace (no pun intended) the lino technique. Less is more when it comes to detail....