Grey days and linocuts

Marbled White Butterfly - Hand-coloured Linocut - Rosemary Powell

Our plan for mushroom mooching in The New Forest on sunday was scuppered by an uninspiring pencil greyness to the day. So after sitting through an equally uninspiring couple of hours of Formula 1 racing, we decided to make use of a printing press we had borrowed from a friend and spend our time linocutting. I had never produced one before and only really knew the theory of the method, therefore a pretty enjoyable and enlightening few hours ensued - mostly!

We each worked on a single colour design, with the idea of hand-colouring the print after, therefore making each print unique. Though judging by the variety of blacks I attained with each pull, they were pretty unique anyway - but not always in a good way!

Still the seeds have been sown and I suspect that our friend will struggle to get his press back. Hope you like the results of our sortie into linocutting.

We did manage a little fresh-air, in the form of a recce for leaping Trout on our local river, more on this later.............

Avocets - Hand-coloured Linocut - Dan Powell