out early

I took my camera with me when I went out walking this morning. Lovely light

stamps

I've been playing around making my own stamps. The bullrush at the top and the goose were both cut on lino and the trees were cut on a soft, rubber material. I was really pleased with the goose but the shading was pure serendipity - it should have come out as a solid colour but for some reason the acrylic paint I used decided to do its own thing and make it look like a proper goose! The trees came out better than I thought they would as there was some quite fine cutting involved but the softer material was much easier to cut than the lino. I suspect it won't have such a long life as the lino though.

I'm beginning to think about trying to make a proper lino cutting on a block that I can make several prints from - say for Christmas cards. I think I need to practice for a while first on the small stuff and at the moment I have two fingers that I've cut quite deeply so I need to try to avoid that. What we suffer for our art!!

I'm getting excited about this which is a bad sign!

LAKE 1 APPLIQUE

This is what I did with the materials I collected together the other day. It's my first go at applique and the inspiration was the lake that I walk around each day with my dogs.

At this time of year it's crammed full of Canada Geese and I love their constant chatter and the sound of their wings as they fly overhead.

I think I have a colour balance problem here though I'm not quite sure how to improve it so at the moment I'm going to leave it alone and maybe come back to it when I've sat and looked at it for a bit.