During the St Ives exhibition I had an explore. The streets of St Ives and outwards. I walked the coastal path to Carbis Bay and found some gorgeous views along the way, this being my favourite to cut. I've still not made up my mind whether or not I like this tall spiky plant, the echium. But I have to say I loved this big group of them and against that beautiful blue sea it had a really tropical feel.
Here's how I made my print
Image flipped and drawn onto the lino. I drew the clouds on in white crayon as my first cutting guide.
First colour is the pale blue of the sky, I decided the easiest thing to do with this composition was to sort out the sky first.
this is definitely a pet filled print story as they're all keeping me company in my studio.
Next cut for the sky, my first pale blue has been cut away so I can keep it on the paper.
Next I printed the pale grey and the yellow sand in the distance of Gwithian Beach.
3 colours on paper
Next I added another brighter blue to my sky, but as I loved how delicate my clouds and sky were looking i decided to leave some of my prints without this blue. I was concerned I might overpower the final print. As it turned out I prefer the ones with the bright blue sky. I have now made them all blue skies as these are selling well.
Also a darker sandy colour on the far headland
Now the most important bit of this print... the aqua blue sea.
And the print so far, you can see the difference in the skies. And another little dog trying to figure out what I'm doing and is it walk time.
Not to be left out here's my cat who's really not helping with her choice of sleeping place. The lino has been cleared of the sea and ready to start the greens.
Green printed, shame to loose so much of that gorgeous blue but that's the plan for this print.
my lino has now got the sunlight of the first green cut away. All those bits of light seen through the dark echiums
but before i can print the next green I've printed the lighter lilac of the echiums and a few bright lilac flowers that were shining through
then the next green, here on the lino,
and on the paper
The ilno is now cut ready for the next darker green. I've kept the clouds at the top incase I wanted to add some blue back in, so I've not cleared them from the lino.
But first I've printed the dark purple of the echiums
a dark green over the whole thing
This one hasn't got the blue on the sky and it's quite different. I think it's less summery. It's nice to see a different balance though between the background and foreground. I don't have a plan just a photograph to work from so I experiment a lot as I develop the print, learning different things mostly about distances within the image and the best way to draw the viewer in. This makes my limited editions variable.
A little close up of cuts because i thought it was a pretty picture.
All that is now left on the lino is the final layer to print in an almost black
and here's my finished picture with a blue sky.
That's Godrevy light house in the distance so I called it
Towards Godrevy
14 colours
Edition size 9
print size 55 x 42cm
Sommerset 250 paper size 56 x 76cm
£400 unframed find them here
