Sure, Love in a Mist has stunning flowers—the variety I grew this year, Persian Jewels, lived up to its name and sprouted flowers like juicy pink, white and blue sweeties. However, I secretly grow it for the bizarrely cool seed pods. Loathe to chuck my hand-reared-from-seed babies onto the compost heap, I took some shots of the pods against the autumn sky for posterity, and the last two shots are of the remnants of my Swan River Daisies. I’m dying to do some autumny lino cuts of these.

I’ve become, erm, somewhat obsessed with traditional printmaking methods of late. I’m not sure what it is about the medium that I find so fascinating–you’d think the concept of multiple reproductions would be less compelling than one-off, original pieces of art, but prints are just…yummy. I hear The Complete Printmaker is the printing book to purchase, so I’ll be nabbing that this week, thanksverymuch.

Here’s a round-up of relief-printing-related links I’ve bookmarked:

Printmakers

Angie Lewin
Blair Kelly
Blue Chair Press
Evil Prints
Jeremy Speck
Kirsten Francis
Nathalie Roland
Rigby Graham
Two Eyeballs
Warren Criswell

Resources

Wetcanvas Printmaking Forum
Livejournal Printmakers
The Baren Forum

Tutorials

ESBQ Blockprinting Tutorial
Nathalie Roland’s Printmaking Tutorial
Ryusei Okamoto’s Woodcut Diary
EKU Linocut Instructions
Reduction Print Process
How to Make a Linocut

Suppliers

Daniel Smith
GraphicChemical
Mclain’s
Speedball

Irish Print Studios

The Black Church Print Studio
Graphic Studio Dublin
Cork Printmakers
Limerick Printmakers

I haven’t done any printing since college, and I suddenly got the urge to try some linocuts again.

Step One: quick sketch.
Step Two: carve, carve, carve and make a huge mess.
Step Three: print.

I’m not totally happy with the result—I really rushed the carving, because I was so impatient to try printing the thing! Next time I’ll try a two or three-colour print, methinks.

Presenting my first foray into the world of stuffed toys: Minimoopy!

This little guy is based on the uber-cute pattern from Moopy & Me, and you can see how other folks have interpreted him over on Flickr. I raided the huge fabric stash in the barn (Baggio’s folks were in the rag trade many moons ago) and came out with some felt-like material in different shades of red, an old heart-patterned table cloth and some white toweling. It was actually huge fun to do—even by hand! I’m beadily eyeing more patterns and laying down an intricate carpet of subtle hints about a sewing machine for christmas.

Oh, check out the stuffie/plushie creations over at The Sweetest Pea and Sewing Stars—insanely cute.

Yup, yet another creative-sketchbloggy-type-thing™ (technical term). This is pretty much for me, though. Somehow the mere fact of publishing something online propels me to create more, and I do need that little push to work on my own things occasionally, as opposed to commissioned or ‘work’ work.

I intend to post sketches, ideas, photography, inspirational links and perhaps a tutorial or two; anything creative that takes my fancy, in other words. Here we go…