Over the past few days I’ve been carving details of my new Mari Lwyd linocut design into a small piece of lino to see how they work out, so now I’ve started drawing details onto my full size block. There’s a way to go yet though before I start carving…
It’s #Caturday Saturday again and here’s a negative silhouette of Bill aka William ChatNoir, out little black rescue cat. She’s very sweet.
I’m carrying on cutting my practice piece, carving some bells and ribbons that will adorn the head of the Mari Lwyd. The bells are quite a challenge.
I’m using Flexcut tools kept sharp with a Slip Strop into traditional grey hessian-backed lino. I drew directly onto the lino with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, working from a photo of my own Mari Lwyd.
I’ve cut the little eye of the Mari Lwyd, a practice run for my next large-ish linocut. I’m using traditional grey, hessian-backed lino and Flexcut tools and a Slip Strop to keep them sharp. I blooded myself today! Still do it after all these years!
Here are some heads from May 2013. Three are from my sketchbooks, one is charcoal over a discarded cyanotype print, one chalk over an ink splash, and one full colour monotype. I think I like drawing people’s faces more than any other thing.
I’ve made a start on my next Mari Lwyd lino block, but instead of carving straight onto the full size block, I’m trying out different bits of the design on smaller lino blocks, to see how they work out. First up, is the Mari’s eyeball, quite a mischievous eye, but some find her quite sinister.
My laptop finally gave up the ghost a couple of days ago, I’d had it about 10 years and it was geriatric. And now it’s properly dead. So I missed blogging for a couple of days but I now have a new laptop and here’s this week’s #Caturday, a day late but better late than never. I’ve overlaid Bill’s positive silhouette onto a pastel sketch I did of Swansea from Waun Wen Park a few years ago.
My new laptop has 16 Gigabytes of RAM and a One Terabyte SSD (Solid State Drive). Oooh get me! Size matters y’know!
My poor old (as in very old) laptop is on its way out. I’m hoping to get another in the next couple of days but until then, my blog posts might be a bit all over the shop, so it’s pot luck. Here are some trees. I painted them from a sketch done on my hourly walks during the Covid19 lockdown, remember that? It seems like forever ago now. My painting style here is influenced by the European Expressionist painter Gabrielle Munter.
Piggies! This fine beast is from my blog in April 2013. I visited a farm and drew some Mangalitza pigs. I really liked my sketch of the boar and turned it into a little lino cut.
I traced my Mari Lwyd sketch onto tracing paper today, flipped it over and drew it onto my lino block, like we used to do with maps back in my schooldays, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. It’s a very basic outline, I’ve got to do some studies of the bells and ribbons, flowers and eyeballs before I start cutting.
scribblah 