More of the same

Started cutting blocks - you can see one was finished and photo taken in the morning and the other in the afternoon by the light...
neither are finished properly but I may wait and see how the others start turning out and respond accordingly. You can see how I scribble on the block as I go along - sometimes so I can see what I've got so far - and sometimes to work out a difficult bit as it changes from a drawing into a woodcut .
You can see in the top one too - the white strip running underneath middle right to left - how there is sometimes a sneaky bit of white paper they have used to fill in the wood that appears in the middle layer once you start cutting - it's terribly annoying sometimes as you don't get the same sort of cutting marks where the top layer cuts easily off the paper - but working with this cheap plywood is all about going with the flow and surprising oneself with how you adapt...keeps you on your toes....

I loved the abstract challenge of cutting the maze and just enjoying the shapes and seeing what the cutting marks did almost in a trance. I am going to use it for the cover image I think, with a smaller fool printed in the middle and some big lettering across the bottom for the title.

Sounds as if we are all going to have get used to having to adapt as they announced more weeks of lock-down today but also an indefinite future of it for those in high risk categories; not much hope for our sort of book fairs if they want us to continue social distancing; it doesn't come much more intimate than a book fair table with our heads all bent over the books.....