Over the summer I wanted to use the opportunity of hanging the washing outside to use the indoor hanging rack as a print drying rack and create another area linocut. I felt very buoyed by the selection of last summers efforts into Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair so I wanted to have another go.
I decided that I would use a similar view of the forest but I wanted to incorporate a lot of texture and use caustic soda this time. The last one was all about super-smooth rainbow rolls to describe layers of mist. This one is to be all about the textures of the forest.
We were so busy over the summer that the making of this has become rather protracted. I also had a horrible moment when I realised that if I turned the print upside down the sky made rather too convincing waves.
I think that this made me go slightly too early with the dark layer over the trees:
The registration seems particularly tricky with this print, I'm not entirely sure why but there's only one of the 10 that the trees are perfectly registered on. The previous layer was light enough that I can get away with it as it's only very slight, but it does mean I can't reprint the tree trunks as I'll make a mess of them. I had a bit of a pause for a couple of weeks as we were away for two weekends and just so busy in between... I used the time to think over what I wanted to do.
Today I took the plunge and got the caustic soda out again. First I used a lot of ink and some newsprint to transfer exactly where the tree plate sits onto the background plate. Then I cut the top half of the background plate away. I used caustic soda painted onto various pressed stems of leaves and ferns and other foliage to create a lot of texture in the etch whilst trying to be careful to keep the big shapes well in the foreground and more delicate shapes further back.
I also painted caustic soda onto the tree trunks to etch those away a little and will try to wipe ink off them when I come to print the next layer. I think rainbow rolls could work really well to help add depth too.
The other thing I did was to paint caustic soda all around the edges of the tree shapes on the tree plate so that I can add some subtle colour to the trees but by etching away the harsh edges I hope the registration won't be an issue.
All the research I've done on Cezanne and especially my interview with Neil Bousfield are really feeding into how I'm thinking about this. I like that I'm using foliage from the forest to create the foliage imagery in the print. I also sketched the view that inspired tis print a lot so have lots of reference material for colour and the feel of it. I am keen to delve more deeply into facts about the forest and reference them directly in my work. The fact that 10,000 tonnes of timber is 'produced' by the forest each year seems to me to be begging to be referenced in some way but I'm not sure how yet. The fact that the forest is also so important for wildlife and the irony that the cyclical tearing up of so many trees produces areas for ground nesting birds and reptiles also needs examining.
I think I've been gradually working my way towards tacking these issues and not being exactly sure how but having done the research for the paper I'm now more sure than ever that I need to explore more imagery that references the issues I'm really trying to explore in this landscape.