Printmaking: Snowdrop

Mum’s design for calendar layout

Mum and dad visited last month to help me do a little DIY.  We spent the hottest week of the year trapped in my postage stamp of a kitchen, giving it a little facelift – it now looks fabulous – very appreciative daughter!

Mum has just got back into printmaking, and had the idea (during her tea and cereal in bed – morning think/idea time – it’s the best apparently) to make a calendar for friends and family as a Christmas present.  We tallied up all the people we wanted to make gifts for, and realised we would need to make 30 calendars.  We picked a theme – flowers, and a medium – lino, and agreed to each make six prints.  The problem with having a labour intensive good idea in the middle of the year, is not having enough time to complete your project.  We would each need to make six, two to three stage prints – with a minimum 30 print run – I didn’t think I could complete that by December 2013.

After much tooing and frowing of ideas – see above mum’s original design layout for an A4 calendar, mum came up with a new idea to make a bi-monthly reminder calendar-thingy.  So we will still make 30 calendars, but 3 prints each – much more doable.

January to February

Initial layout

This spring took so long to pop, seeing snowdrops really cheered me up.  I wanted to have a go at a quick 2 stage linocut, which I might be able to print at home (minus an Albion press!), so I drew up a simple design of snowdrops.

Tracing

First cut

First print

Final cut

This was very much a doodle print – I wanted to see what my line-making would be like – I’m gradually improving my cutting – I am not splitting the lino as much, but I still have ‘wooow’ moments when the lino cutter scoots away from me.  I printed this onto thin printer paper using a roller.  I quite like the blue and green.

Snowdrop linocut