Lino prints

I started cutting a lino block way back in the Summer, when my courgette plants were young, and the first fruits were forming on them. But I didn't get round to printing from the block until recently (the start of some damp Autumn weather). I'm doing this in stages - I think it's called reductive printing. Here are some of the prints. After an initial yellow/orange print, I cut out some more and printed in leaf green:

For the third print down I dabbed a bit of red ink straight onto the lino before printing. I like the result, but don't want to ruin it by printing over it, so it may stay as it is...

I want to make a virtue out of the fact that I can't get perfect prints without a press, but you get more texture in the areas where the inks are thinner. I'm hoping that after several more overprints the layers of ink will still be visible beneath the final one.

Now the third stage of cutting and overprinting.  I also wanted to try printing on tissue paper. The finer the paper, the easier to get a print. At first I thought I'd go for dark blue/green:

This print was directly onto yellow tissue. I hope that there's enough detail there not to miss the earlier under-printing.

Then something told me to try a lighter, more turquoise ink:

 

 

I'm pleased with these. Just one more layer of colour to go...which I think might be a rich purple, but then again I might change my mind....

Pastel Peppers

Here is a drawing I made in my sketchbook. The peppers had been lurking in the fridge for a while. They needed eating, but I wanted to record their concertina wrinkles before we chopped them up.

There's something very rewarding about drawing a still life of fruit in soft pastels. There's some affinity I find between the rich colours of both, and their textures.