Pages printed!

These are my "journey" book pages which I'll be binding over the weekend. They were all printed with lino and oil-based inks in the albion press.  The images were made for a Print and Process project based on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. You would never know it, but they said to just run with whatever line took your fancy. i chose part of a line that said "Even if I were to walk from here to India..." so started thinking about a journey on foot.

I'm pretty happy with them as a set. Using small lino blocks like hand stamps, the suns, arrows and houses break up the flow of the book and make it a bit more playful. It's taken me ages to do and is only just dry but I feel like a weight has been lifted now it's all done! I'll be binding them in a hardback cover which will be covered in a white oilcloth with maybe a grey leather spine. I'm still a bit undecided on that so any ideas...?

Double whammy

Firstly, a sample print from my book about a journey. I'm quite chuffed with it and think it could look lovely in other colours. It still needs its little coloured houses but I quite like the abstracty look at the moment.

Secondly one of my collages was featured in a lovely treasury by Sarah and Jon of  Pocketstudio which is exciting. The other work featured is gorgeous I feel mine looks quite out of place! 

Anyway, time to go and do research, I have to think of a "batch of five" identical things I can produce, buy or compile that could potentially be mass-made, by Tuesday...erk.

Any ideas more than welcome!

Finished!

Phew! I'm having a break from my essay and just wanted to show off the linocut I finished this morning in front of Bargain Hunt. My fingers ache but I'm pretty pleased, I just hope to God it prints OK. I'll be printing it in a really pale grey as an icy background to some little coloured wooden houses for my landscape print project. I've got allsorts of lovely mountainous scenes planned but only two weeks to cut, print and bind them into a book... erk. It's fine, it's not as if I have an essay to write, another brief to start and finish and picture framing to do by Dec 11th or anything...

Oh yeah, in case you wondered it's not proper lino, it a vinyl tile from b+q as you get six 12" sq tiles for £3 as opposed to a 6x8" piece of proper lino for about the same. The tiles are easier to cut through, though that can be a mixed blessing as you can see where there are holes right through to the backing paper! But because it's so cheap I just stick another layer on the back once I'm done to give it strength. Seems to work OK. I was thinking of printing it up in colour at some stage too, I think turquoise or golden yellow would be just dreamy!

Crapness and goodness

OK, I'm officially crap at blogging, it's been weeks! 

Nevermind, I've got work coming out of my ears at the moment with uni. I'm writing an essay on 18th century Anglo-American artists, have a 6-week print project based on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and another project illustrating cockney rhyming slang! It's all fun though, if a little exhausting! The image above was my best attempt at lino cutting (which I've now chosen to specialise in for the Chaucer task) and I rather like it. 

If it weren't for the length of time those bloody oil-based inks take to dry I'd be bashing these out for Christmas cards but I fear they wouldn't be dry in time! I'm really looking forward to getting my print project started as I pretty much get to make images of whatever I want so long as I base them loosely around one line of the middle English text. The line I've chosen is "Even if I were to walk from here to India...", so I can muck about with the idea of a journey...

I cannot freaking wait to get my teeth into it!