Of lino and letters

I am participating in a group exhibition for International Women's Day. It is called "Eco-Women" and will celebrate women environmentalists, scientists, activists, artists and all manner of women who have helped build knowledge of our ecology and environment and who have also fought to protect it.

So I have been researching a few ideas and have happily landed on my woman.

I am getting my act together and am looking to combine letterpress and embossing.  Lino cutting is always a blast from the past for me so I have to reacquaint myself with what to do and how to do it; but I have spent many happy hour engrossed in the design, the tools and the lino - just quietly working away.

I am working with a local rainforest reserve - Mary Cairncross.  It is just down the road from us and a special remnant rainforest. So I sketched out some ideas of a path within the rainforest.

And then decided to add the block of text into the middle. I transferred the imagery to the block, and began to carve.

Once I finished carving I did a proof on cheap paper to see what I thought. Apart from the crinkles, possibilities were emerging.

 Doing a proof on real paper is always so much more rewarding.  The carving is coming up well, but I am not so sure of the design. The pathway and rocks are too weak at the bottom and the text block means you kind of lose the notion of the pathway anyway...

But delicious.  So I am now carving a new block; I have tightened up the frame a fair bit so the text block will be more defined. Fun times!

In other news, I took receipt of an unexpected parcel during the week.  I knew who it was from (dear friends) but had no idea what they may have sent. It was pretty heavy and a bit bulky.

The grin was as wide as the grand canyon when I opened it - chock full of italic wood type!

It was dusty and dirty but beautiful.  I don't have any Italic wood type and it is about 5cm high and bit of a fun typeface.

So I washed it all in warm soapy water and scrubbed it with a brush - now it is shiny clean. I had fun circling it around the sink and kitchen bench in the studio

And there was also some bonus type in it - a different typeface but same size and italic as well, so it can be a capital letter or I could figure out a bunch of words that could be printed with what I have!

 I think I have the best friends...