Nature exploration Journey from sketchbook - to final print designs • Trips to botanical gardens and woodland walks really affirmed my love for nature this year, and my interest in •
exploring it through my practice. I’ve been feeling stunted with certain projects of late - and no matter how I'm feeling with regards to other briefs - I revert to drawing nature. whenever I'm stressed or not feeling my best being in the outdoors always calms me!
Im learning to do what I enjoy and think that this is an indication that I should create a project evolving around wildlife of some kind. I have been inspired to keep a sketchbook around nature, with the potential to become a zine / lino print collection / perhaps even pattern making?
The Brief
To create a sketchbook evolving around a nature theme. I will primarily explore this through observational drawing from around the British countryside. Additionally I will refer to botanical books for reference material. From this series I aim to curate and develop a selection of successful designs, appropriating some for lino print.
For reference material, as well as my observational drawing, I create a lot of my sketches from a beautiful array of flowers and plants that I have documented.
A varying collection of pages from my sketchbook & some mini lino prints inspired by these drawings. I really enjoyed create small quick linos - it was a nice comparison to the hours it takes me to cut the larger more intricate designs.
• When drawing a piece intended for lino, it really forces me to be considerate about the line quality and amount of detail featured within my work. - because of the nature of lino cut. I’m more aware of negative space and work with bold graphic line even with the smallest details. Since lino has become such a main part of my practice, it has now had a big influence over the way I approach my sketchbook work and overall approach to image making. I still enjoy using a range of media, but I will often find myself drawing things with the potential that it will become a lino cut - which means less shading / sketching, and more bold line work. • In my sketchbook i revert to using ink as my main medium. I’ve recently bought a brush ink pen which gives a lovely line quality, and I absolutely love using it. it allows me to work quickly and more free - Instead of relying on the comfort of graphite pencils, I've really enjoyed being more experimental, creating more organic and spontaneous lines.
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From here, is my transition from initial sketchbook work to developing my designs into more finalised illustrations with some successes being suitable for prints or zines.
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For most of the work I have scanned in my sketchbook and edited the drawings or Lino prints digitally, experimenting with colour, composition, and texture to create some interesting and decorative pieces.
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I think the addition of colour really helps to bring the images to life, and find the most success in creating a simple two tone colour palette.
Digital experimentation - creating dierent combinations of lino - trying out colour, gradients and texture. Not always successful - as above but by going through process has allowed me to refine my digital skills and hone in on techniques that I feel I could successfully integrate into my practice.
Mushroom Print - successfully adding colour to achieve a digital & analogue piece which compliments my lino prints. Even when these drawings don't become linos My use of bold line and block colour means that they still carry a similar aesthetic.
Mushroom - colour variation. Ive enjoyed injected some bright colour into my images! But also like to use a limited colour palette
Mushroom - Black and white negative. - this reminded me of dierent ways of approaching cutting lino - cutting it out so the negative space will be the details instead of the background.
Mushroom - some surreal versions - negative colour variations
A well as plants and flora, animals have also been a focus of my sketchbook. I think snakes link well with the darker themes i sometimes explore in my work and i found them really interesting to draw. I used a brush pen to create strong flowing lines with fine liner for the detail - a combination that i think is visually strong.
Experimenting with colour and texture. I think that the final images very much carry the quality of a lino print or paper cut, and I wanted to see them as stand alone images. I think they're strong and could work well as individual prints. I used some selected monoprint texture to create the background aect.
A collective print of the snakes. 
 
 
 When drawing my plants and animals i don't plan the composition before hand but I enjoy bringing them together to create some really interesting stand out prints.
The process of playing around with composition in this way inspired me to begin designing patterns.(see next blog post)
Whale collection - printed in lino. - inspired by David Attinburghs Blue Planet. would love to create more sea life themed prints in the near future!
• Whale print - I wanted to arrange a simple composition by combining the whale linos in size order which I think works well. I digitally added some subtle colour and mono print texture which i think brings some life to the image. - think the texture represents water really well and would look great on other sea life themed work.
• unfortunately i didn't have time to expand the sea life theme as much as i wanted. I would like to propose that the whales would make a great pattern design and I intend to put this together in the near future.
Butterfly prints - lino cut with block colour added digitally. I would really like to propose some that are done in print. The process of lining up colour through printing can be a little diďŹƒcult and it’s something I haven't quite mastered yet, but I look forward to learning.
Ive been having success adding colour digitally so decided to take a few example of flora and edit them in photoshop. I chose a simple two tone colour palette of blue an orange and softened the black. I think the subtle colour helps to finalise the illustrations and I can imagine them as a collective print, zine or pattern designs perhaps.
• My swallow linos are some of my favourite and the two together are a nice combination. - I would love to create a full bird series and make it into a zine perhaps. I played around briefly with pattern design which didn't end up being successful but I think theres potential to develop this more - and perhaps combine them with some of the flower prints?
• Sticking with a simple colour palette of two tones I settled on a muted pink and blue. This was created digitally but I really would like to do this with lino. i plan for the near future would be to create some limited lino prints from these.
Red Dawn
• My most successful print design from the set. The layout of the swallows remains the same as my other combinations but I really like the inclusion of the Sun which adds a pop of colour and some depth to the piece.
• the additions of the subtle mono-print texture is really working for me. - something that i have gone overboard on in the past, but i feel that a hint of it works affectively here.
• I also love the colour combination - one that i use across other pieces which ties them together visually.