Not a particularly inspiring photograph of my desk in studio 3 Artspace Portsmouth – (the next photograph will be though) !
A new lino cut takes shape from a drawing that I made of HMS 33, a veteran of WW1, a Monitor Class 29 warship that saw action in Gallipoli and has been sitting in a dry dock in Portsmouth Royal Naval Dockyard since 1997. She has now been fully restored and is open to the public and when I find a spare £10, for the entrance fee, I’ll take a look at the insides ! You can view the exterior of the ship for free and I made the line drawing in my A3 sketchbook the other day. I am now in the throws of transferring the drawing and tracing it (backwards) onto a piece of good old fashioned lino – the type of brown lino that we used at school back in the 1960’s ! I prefer this sort of lino as its hard and is almost like carving wood – you need to keep your tools very sharp and I use a fine carborundum stone to keep them razor sharp. Needless to say, I try to keep my fingers behind the blade !
Generally my lino blocks take me several weeks to draw up and carve. I visit The Omega Printmakers studio in Portsmouth once a month and spend the entire day printing. However, yesterday was spent gouging away at the block and I have just about finished HMS 33 but in the background is HMS Victory, which will be a bit of a fiddle ! My original plan was to carve two blocks, one will be inked with grey and one black ink over the top but this may change and I may stick to one colour.
I have plans to make another series of lino prints of Americas Cup boats – only this time I will change the format a little and incorporate several primary colours and some bold shapes ! If you wish to purchase these or any of my prints they are stocked by Jack House Gallery, 121 The High St., Portsmouth.
More photos of the progress of HMS 33 later ! Hopefully she will be ready to print next month – in the meantime I will keep chipping away ! Oh and today’s good news is that the postman brought me a new copy of Classic Boat magazine – so there might be the odd distraction or three !
LINK http://www.paintedships.com/monitor.asp
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chriswoodartist 