Summer has been a bit of a washout, so I was feeling a need to make a happy, warm positive print. The idea was pretty simple. My studio and cottage is on the side of the Usk valley and the swallows, housemartins and swifts fly over and through the garden and between the flowers. The sunflower is a bit ambiguous, also being the sun itself. I wanted the Swallow to be in that fast flying, pure joy pose, with wings swept back in a crescent. Maybe there's a subconscious sun and moon thing going on but I was certainly trying to channel the joy of 'Glad Day'(1793) by William Blake(1757-1827)
This is a jigsaw reduction print. The Jigsaw part is that the lino is cut into two or more parts to be inked up separately and then usually assembled to be printed. It allows a change of colour between adjacent areas but often leaves a fine white line between the shapes. I made this problem a deliberate part of the design, outlining some of the elements and extending the petals into the sky, maybe suggesting the sun's rays.
I thought I'd also experiment with drawing all of the design straight onto the lino at the start of the process, rather than transferring each tone as the print progresses, as I usually do . It allowed me to accurately identify the exact sections to be cut out. The black ball point pen I use stays on the lino for about three rounds/layers of printing. Before I print the lightest of colours I need to wipe the ball point ink over with solvent to stop it printing onto the paper.
I've had lots of questions about how I maged to cut out the shapes so neatly and what knife I've used. I should have videoed it. It's an Olfa brand knife, I've been using them for years as a school teacher(yes, scary). I also use then when carving lino to print to define shapes. The snap off blades mean you can be sure of a sharp edge, just be careful not to put too much sideways pressure on a blade. A snapped blade usually breaks into three and the middle section can fly like shrapnel (that's the end of the safety briefing!).
The lino for the background and the foreground swallow is stuck down to a sheet of 6mm MDF. I use this as a registration board, with the pins taped at the top for the paper. Corresponding tabs are taped to each sheet of paper. I must do a blog/video specifically on this, it's hard to explain in words and I don't think the video at the end of this post shows enough of it.
This is also a reduction print, as are most of my recent editions. So each section is also reduced through each layer of inking up and printing to build the final image.
I work tonally, printing the light tones first, working slightly darker for each layer, until the final layer is almost black (it's actually a dark grey blue).
The blue and the red on the head of the swallow were quite small irregular shaped areas and I found the best way to ink them up was by dipping a finger tip in the colour and to dap it onto the lino.
I started out with just over 40 prints and ended up with an edition of 30. There are many opportunities with these techniques for inky fingers, or a sloppy bit of inking up, to mess up a print, so I was quite pleased to have so many left.
I'm not sure I'd use the exact combination of techniques again, it's a bit of a faff and fiddle, I can usually work around the difficulties of making an exact change of colour within a print. In fact I often try to avoid keeping the colour precisely to one area. I like to be quite painterly when I roll the colours of ink onto the lino. That is now the main reason my editions are labelled as varied (V.E.).
The closest I've come to using this technique in the past was with the Hares in Meadow Cranesbill print. This used two lino plates, both mounted onto MDF registration boards and both then reduced and printed separately onto the same paper. There's more about how and why this print was made in the link at the bottom of the page.
The Sun Swallow print is going to be included in my 2026 calendar for Flametree publishing.
Here is a quick, one minute video of clips of the making of the print.
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, I try to post about each new print and painting but I'm also going to start adding more about specific techniques, tools and materials.
Please feel free to ask any questions about the why and how my prints are made.
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