Play your cards right

In response to the NightFair Market call out for an Alice in Wonderland themed auction, I wanted to do something with the animals - I’m rather fond of drawing them, as you may know! I started with a couple of sketches of the white rabbit - who has turned to steampunk, and attempted to get the cat to pose smiling as my muse for the Cheshire cat - mixed success with that one! With a love of lino print and mini prints which look like book illustrations, i thought playing card sized images would work well. It would be nice to use them as art trading cards at some point.

So - What to do for each suit?

The cat? Obviously she is ace

The rabbit - traditionally the heart

The dodo - A spade seems to fit with the dead as a dodo…digging a grave and all - bit dark, sorry

And the flamingo - a club reference - club tropicana type reference - or croquet type club? Whatever takes your fancy.

I’ve cut the lino into vaguely card shaped pieces, I might even trim to playing card size. I printed the red and black all at the same time - not sure if that’s good printmaking practice , but it worked for me. I’ll print some just black as well as that’s my go to colour, but I do love the traditional colours. I’m so literal when it comes to colour, but I’m OK with that.

I’ve listed the full print in my shop

See the Seagull

I loved my seagull drawing, I really liked the use of the background cross hatching to make the white body of the gull. The pose and composition I thought would work well as a linocut. Using the plasticy kind of lino, (not my favourite to work with) it has the advantage of picking up a shadow of pencil drawings - making the transfer of the image very accurate - and the resulting print comes out the same way as the original drawing. This satisfies me! I printed in a dark colour  - just to establish if there were any lines to refine. Then onto think of the colour. The pale green/blue I've chosen will represent the darker feathers, once printed  - I'll cut away the image and print with black (maybe dark grey) for the background. One of the exciting things about printmaking, is never being sure of the resulting image. 

SeagullProgress.jpg