Experimenting with lino prints

After being inspired by Chantal Vincent's gorgeous lino prints, I though I'd have a crack at doing some myself.  I vaguely remember doing this in art class at school and have the pillowslip to prove it.  I don't have all the equipment yet to do a really top notch job, but I'm fairly happy with these beginner's results.



 First design idea.

While cutting out the drangonfly design I decided to add a flower, stem and leaf as can be seen below.

At present I don't have any ink or rollers so have used stamp pads to print the image which has turned out mottled rather than a solid image.

Second design idea.

Original sketch of a Crested Tit.  Isn't he cute?

Drawing to transfer to lino.

Starting the carving process.

You can see I've made some mistakes here as the bird looks like he is hovering above the branch.  When I was carving, I carved away the part where his leg is attached to his body.  Oh well, next time.  :-)  All part of the learning process.  Here is what the final carving looks like after I've tried to clean off the stamp ink.

I got a bit slack here and didn't carve out all the left hand side surface.  Tch, tch. 

I've had oodles of fun trying this out.  The design and drawing process is definately the most enjoyable part for me at this stage.  Hopefully with time I can improve my carving skills for a neater image and aquire some more equipment to get a more professional and finished look.  I did want to find out if I would enjoy this before I spent too much money.

Have a lovely weekend,

Anne