From the trees to the trees

In September I hope to start producing my own own work for sale, hopefully via Etsy, a wonderful site to find hand made items all individually crafted to good standards. As an extension to this, along side my sketchbooks I wanted to start doing some home printing using lino, to create a logo for my work which is unique to me. However, not having much money I'm hesitant to buy any of the necessary equipment!

Instead I decided to start in my Dad's shed.

Flicking through a magazine in a stamp shop I found this beautifully coloured article about hand carved wooden stamps, the pieces of stamped paper were wonderful, and I really liked the idea of working with wood. I think it's great to work with natural elements, so I've started playing around with this myself.

My first attempt.

Carving is a lovely process, slow, delicate and peaceful.

Testing out the stamp with acrylic paint and simple colours created some lovely paper to work on, and inspired a jungle themed drawing.

I'm not usually very good at drawing faces so this took quite a lot of time to perfect, but I'm really happy with the result, and hopefully it will inspire further drawings.