Printing ready for Christmas Open Studios

I've been printing fabric to make cushions for my Christmas Open Studio weekends.



First the cutting fabric from the roll and marking up where I want my central images.

This time I was printing hares in black, grey and red. 

Here on tea towels and here are the cushion pieces. 

I've also been cutting a new lino block, a hare in the summer to complete my hare series. 

Now finished and ready to print along with a small lino block of Hare and Moon. 

 

I cut a stencil to screen print some backgrounds for the hare print. 

Screen printing in progress

and the results 

I can never decide which process I like best, so I often combine screen printing and lino cutting.

I hope to have time to print the block on top of the screen printed background soon.

Meanwhile I've been hand colouring my other hare print. The original edition is sold out. It's fun to be painting again and I enjoy mixing and playing with different colours. 

Now to make up the cushions!

Sketchbook pages and some new work....

Here are a few pages from my sketchbook, finished at home after my museum drawing day. I don't spend time on sketchbooks, often my ideas are a very rough sketch which I then use for a lino cut; so it was a change to spend a little more time on these pages.

 

Following on from my love of hares my new work is 3D lino cuts, each a one off featuring a hare.

This one is Hare, the lurker, the looker to the side. 

They are great fun to do, working smaller makes a change for me.

Here's Hare, the swift as wind at Wimpole Hall. 

The titles are taken from a Middle English poem The Names of the Hare which may have come from a Shropshire family. It was apparently designed as a ritual to be recited by the hunter on his first encountering a hare; and the 77 different names were supposed, on their recital, to deliver it into the hunter's power. It's 64 lines long, so I can't help thinking that by the time the hunter has recited it, the hare would be long gone!