Woods and Christmas

I finally finished Reflections, just in time for the December meeting of the NWBC.

The drawings are based on the photos I took on our walk in autumn. In the end I decided to use inktense crayons.

The sides and endpapers are taken from a map of 1894 showing the farms and buildings that were on our route before the woodland was planted.

I ended up unsticking and repositioning the pages and sides several time in an effort to get the pages to sit flat when it was folded up. I more or less got there in the end but I’m glad I printed the sides on fairly substantial cartridge paper.

I’d never made a tunnel book before and it was an interesting experiment, but I probably won’t make another one for a while.

We all took a small blank book to the meeting (I made a blizzard book with single pages) which we swopped round so everyone filled in page in everyone else’s book, a sort of extended joint Christmas card.

Moving slowly

After all the hard work from cast and crew the final performance of Babes in the Wood was last night. This means I have no more excuses; I need to get on with Reflections and with some new prints.

I made a mock up for the tunnel book

And tried making the pieces using gelli printing for texture

And overlaid them to see how it worked

I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to include more of the tree foliage, that the card stock I used was too thin and that I might be better off painting rather than printing the colour.

I think I'd quite like to do it as collagraph but there isn't time