more blocks

More blocks including the skeleton on the globe ...and trying out different ways of doing different images - proof will be in the printing on the simpler ones...then last minute I have started cutting another one of a close up of a tree with eyes all over it I saw at the bottom of the graveyard doing my tree deep breathing yoga ( self devised) - so many phone calls (nice) needed something to do with my hands...

Skeletons

working on the edge of bad taste, kitsch, the gothic, and universal symbolism it is good to have antecedents and a tradition of art and print history behind one.....the danse macabre theme began in a Parisian cemetery in the early 1400's and continued across Europe for over 400 years, an inspiration to lead a good life and as a method of social comment for artists/caricaturists like Thomas Rowlandson as in the English Dance of Death 1815.....

more new cuts

Where is the child in all this? - is this a child? a Fool's child? or a child fool? facing a blank future in an immense dark wood, no hands, no arms, no mouth, powerless, but taking it all in??
then bandaged trees: and two more flooding images...

I keep thinking my Fool looks a bit like Frankenstein's monster with all his bandages...
and actually this morning I was reading about Mary Shelley's later book The Last Man  published 1826, about a global plague at the end of the 21st century wiping out all but one man on the planet - how prescient of her - after writing Frankenstein in the year of the great grey winter that followed the eruption and ash-fall across the globe of Mount Tambora in 1816. She then lost her husband Shelley by drowning, two of their three toddlers, the death of Byron from sepsis, and her brother from the cholera pandemic that followed the volcanic eruption, and isolated herself because of all the gossip that surrounded her and her friends, writing her own Journal of Sorrow, not published until 1987.....
Eileen Hunt Botting , has written a book Artificial life after Frankenstein to be published later this year - she writes -
By identifying thus with the plague in her private journal and The Last Man, Shelley confronted the stark fact that humanity is the author of its own disasters, even those that seem purely natural or beyond our control....we are the problem behind and the potential solution to the pandemic....

Her mother Mary Wollstonecraft had written in her journal in 1795 on her intrepid trip to Norway on a mission for her lover Gilbert Imlay..
The view of this wild coast, as we sailed along it, afforded me a continual subject for meditation. I anticipated the future improvement of the world....carried my speculations so far as to advance a million or two of years to the moment when the earth would perhaps be so perfectly cultivated and so completely peopled as to render it necessary to inhabit every spot...pictured the state of man when the earth could no longer support him. Whither was he to feel from universal famine?....and the world appeared a vast prison....
more covid reading indeed.....

More fools and easing......

More fools from the Fool gets Sick story for the tarot cards.....including on trolleys and queuing in the forest, and the wooden box theme....

An annoying day with broadband dropping in and out all day , but apart from that spent all day cutting, and a really interesting morning of programs on radio 4, including one on medieval marginalia and the imaginative crude and funny images therein and why they might have been created, as acts of turning the world upside down, coping with the tedium of scribes hand-copying manuscripts, cocking a snook at biblical authority
....lovely comments by cartoonist Martin Rowson about why we draw and doodle, presenting a world to ourselves that we might like to live in...
lots of useful stuff about order and disorder next to each other! ...'the process of finding meaning is edifying'...wish I could remember it all but people kept phoning me up ( also with useful info and stuff...) I must listen again....
and they mentioned blemmyae amazingly!! see above....definitely lets hear it for blemmyae...
lots about laughing skeletons too, I must do one in current circumstances, I do have a drawing to hand as it happens, with an egg timer - a good XR icon....used by Rowlandson in cartoons 250 years ago at least.....will photo tomorrow maybe...

I suppose we should be celebrating reductions in lock-down soon but I am going nowhere fast - can't trust this bumbling governments schemes that go off half cock with nothing properly prepared, to say nothing of DC fiasco; I welcome more freedom for the young and fit but personally I will feel less safe now than before - will happily stick to my routines.....
however maybe by the end of the month I should stop blogging daily - I will have done it for two solid months - I will still do it once or twice a week maybe when I have plenty to show and more stuff finished - such a pile of finishing printing and binding mounting up.....

Back in my own little wood...

...all I see is green out of my window; summer foliage is setting in fast like the sleeping beauty story; gazing out I caught a magpie approaching the hedge looking for eggs in the blackbird and sparrows nests under my nose - was able to clap my hands and scare it away - it retreated to the far tree and skulked and no doubt sulked...
otherwise I have been drawing up blocks all day, apart from back to the graveyard walk, where the geography was completely changed after a day away, with many of the daisies mown closely, (but still plenty left in places) so - surprisingly different yet again and still a delight.....

I even got a blemmyae cut - but it is that wretched pink layered plywood again, very annoying....

A trip to the outside world

If listening to news from the outside world has seemed distanced and unreal it is now becoming a complete farce, a daily sit-com evoking horror and grim hilarity in equal portions.
I decided to venture out today on P's monthly trip-round-the-block-to-keep-the-car-going, and to get a glimpse of what it was like around town (quiet) and before venturing down to my studio to look for some prints for someone, armed with gloves, a scarf for emergencies, and large bag for garnered treasures. It was so nice to be back in there, and perfectly secure once I had navigated the high street - and it felt good to break out from our bubble before we get completely stuck in our ways.....adjust my poor longsighted eyes to a farther horizon....

otherwise I was drawing up blocks all day, after a series of debates - wanting to do more, not liking my drawings, do the sets really need more? yes actually the do look livelier and more coherent with the additions this morning, and 22 cards ( the grand arcana) is a good system to adhere to anyway, and some of these ideas MAY work and provide more story etc etc
and anyway any left over can be part of a new set and join a few others discarded along the way as they didn't fit in, good to have a few spares...it is like introducing new puppies or kittens to an existing household of animals - gently gently and be prepared for some spats along the way - it might all settle down...

and it is lovely working upstairs on drawing and cutting in this amazing hot sunny weather.
lovely also to have had some new stuff delivered and not be rubbing out pencil  on old bits of tracing paper  (and re-using rather manky backs of old woodblocks) - a roll of paper too rather than A4 sheets that wasted strips - I am frugal by nature anyway but I use so much paper I owe it to the planet to be economical.

....some roughs printed at the weekend, some of which may end up elsewhere.....the really tarot set maybe, including Fortitude, and the Magician - with all the hands and the rabbit but no hat...

Bank Holiday Blue

Have been drawing all day so it seems a good day to post up a couple of images: my vulture Fool in a tree - and the image which inspired it, which actually which turned up fortuitously while I was riffling through papers - or at least the photocopy I took, as the original is somewhere in a pile waiting to be printed over... Steve Bell nailed his victim perfectly as usual, as today's events have shown in the rose garden....

Blocks in progress

Played around with these blocks - might show the prints tomorrow; I like seeing how they look here in close proximity - tho of course in mirror image.
Friends and family want a few separate cards for presents but it is hard to find suitably cheery ones;
yesterday P was muttering about Disasters of War when he saw them all spread out on the table - flattering but I didn't think they were that gloomy, and in fact rather too frivolous at times - I am now plotting a really bleak and sinister set as drypoints in monochrome dark colour, I have been wanting to do some drypoint ones since I saw some old french revolutionary playing cards in Lausanne a few years ago...
hope life and the days are long enough...
meanwhile covid book list update - am enjoying finishing Consolations of the Forest - Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga - Sylvain Tesson - given to me at Christmas with great foresight (premonition?) by a good friend....
Feeling less ache-y today, and after 2 grey windy days staying in my insect bitten/plant lashed ankles are recovering from too much nature, I couldn't believe how many bites and itchy allergic blobs I was developing ...... but I braved a quick spin out tonight and rewarded with a new shimmering haze of ox eye daisies now out in full bloom and the beginnings now of ladies bedstraw, the rain has got new things growing....

A Full Spread to date

I woke up feeling exhausted and with more bone-ache than usual so decided it was time to have a day taking it easy, the printing has been fairly relentless to get a couple sets of ten done in a day. I spread all those done so far over the table to have an idea of what they all looked like together and where to go next - I felt I was down to last tricky blocks with no great excitement to print the next. I started doing test prints of them in various different colours still left mixed and will look at them again tomorrow - I have to get used to some of them as they disturb the skin of the equilibrium  - which can be good or bad or lead to future progress.....or not.
I have them in two putative sets but may shuffle and make new ones - try putting all the trees together and all the fools together, or try making two smaller sets and the beginning of a third, either way think about some new images to draw up and cut where I can see gaps or imbalance in the story; if I am still ache-y tomorrow that will be a nice gentle thing to do - brain ache but not arm ache...

More Trees

The Ram headed God was a God of Water and the source of the Nile - and hence fertility; he should really be in my first set about flooding, but he also seems to go well with this foxy looking lady tree who has a touch of Kali about her - both look not to be messed with and strong trees......
I am enjoying giving my trees animal heads and have a bird headed one to print too.
I was interested to read about Blemmyae's in Hartnell's Medieval Bodies book as I have always been mystified by these ubiquitous representations of men from foreign parts with faces on their chests and no heads - he explains them (beyond likening them to our little green men from Mars):
heads came in the top ranking of body parts for the medieval mind so it was natural to see supposed inferior creatures with their heads in rank 2 on their chests, and if the human form was made in God's image then to have no head was decidedly unchristian - or to frame it another way, to not be Christian was to have no head.
Makes perfect sense; I shall enjoy making a print of my own blenmmyae maybe with a tree topping his chest - which will  make him like another medieval creature the mandrake root of course - as recent research shows trees are possibly more intelligent and humane than we are ( tongue in cheek)...

Embracing Tree and Fool and Planet

...And now a filling has fallen out but the dentist is as reluctant to see me as me him so we are on an equal footing at last - I'll survive.....

Apologies - the prints curl when they are still damp; it is not a fool moon but definitely a planet, its was difficult getting the colours right and other less moon-like ones just didn't work; or imagine it as a big round egg, incipient. I forgot to record yesterday that it was a world Bee day I think, definitely worth celebrating, and it was also announced that French astronomers had recorded seeing the emergence of a new planet. The poor earthbound Fool aspires to a better beginning, a rebirth - as one vainly hopes might happen once the current disaster is over, a redirection to a fairer system of wealth distribution and happiness for all including all the inhabitants of our globe - or is he somehow offering up this one? or chasing the Moon? or is it just a big bubble, world as illusion.....
the tree offers itself as comforting mantle or coat   

Falling Fools

You can see I finished late in the day as the images get dimmer and bluer to photograph....
I spent the morning trying out several new blocks trying to get the feel of the new landscape, it was as though there had been a disturbance in the force and I needed to adjust...
not sure about these falling fools and how they will fit in but we needed some darker tones
and I am working on some rather darker tree totems....
there's a nasty seam running through the wood on the right hand one but maybe it works - as tho he is held by a spiders web maybe...

after the incident of you give me the willis in the graveyard I thought I should wash my hair too - perhaps I do look really frightful flitting through the graves, going grey, broke into a new pack of henna - hope stocks hold....

Sick Fool

I spent the morning making drawings for more cards - I am beginning to see more images I need; only one printed satisfactorily today - the cutting marks make him look pockmarked like Grunewald's flagellated Christ but that's ok. I need to do more cutting on the other couple of blocks I tried as well, and even so they may look better in a third set with more obviously tarot-like emblematic images - or else I haven't found the right colouring for them yet, often it works straight away but if it doesn't it seems hard to readjust; or they may look better printed over newspapers as palimpsests.
It was a beautiful warm sunny day which made me want to work in a sunny room with the window open rather than in the basement, and also tidy up a bit.

The graveyard walk seems to get harder work up and down but it may be just the height of the plantain, rye grass and marguerite daisies wrapping themselves round my ankles; the elder is in flower now too looking very creamy - always something new to notice - a yellow leaved holly tree today in flower with white clusters like the carol.... but they have started mowing around the graves again bit by bit - all flesh is grass as the Straw Bear said, earning himself a place in my pack....
A young man parking his car asked if I was alive - overdosed on Gisele obviously - I said I was but that I only came out at dusk.....

New Fools

I felt I should introduce the Fool today into the wood and see what happened - I think he is the same one in different stages maybe, gradually unravelling ( I printed to the last act of Tristan and Isolde today - I thought Tristan tearing his bandages off would help - Wagner is always good for long sessions)....these two images turned out as if he/they was a chrysalis or one of those strange super-white glowing grubs you often find in them, definitely not one of Cecil Collins Holy Fool's but maybe bursting to change into something more sensible ( in all senses of the word )...

I couldn't work out how to photograph the whole first set as it was too wide and thin unless I arranged it differently and I wasn't ready to do that yet, so I photoed the beginning of the new set just to put the fool in context of the wood...

...the shopping trolley fool is his first incarnation maybe, haven't finished it properly yet; and the wood needs to grow around them now...
the great thing about designing cards rather than fixed page books is that you can swap the images around all the time and keep things fluid....

I haven't updated the covid reading list recently but I am currently reading Jack Hartnell's Medieval Bodies, great pictures and a trove of interesting facts and juxtapositions - I heard him give a talk at the ArtWorkers Guild and he was brilliant; this morning I was reading about the Cluny unicorn tapestries and the five senses - this evening , my walk getting later and later round the graveyard, the low raking sun was lighting up all the wild flowers in the grass contre jour and strangely psychedelically 3D, very hypnotic as I kept my eyes fixed to the ground so as not to turn my ankle in the long hillocky grass or trip over a gravestone - it felt just like one of the tapestries or Chaucer's mead.... it is really interesting doing the same walk day in day out....
on the whole not much time for reading , the days whizz by printing two images a day but I feel on the home strait getting the packs done and ready for glueing - and then I can start printing the larger Fool book , I have sent away for some new paint and am really feeling the call to print it now with some definite colours and ways of doing it in mind....plus a growing pile of newpapers to print on thanks to kind neighbours.....
but still days of work ahead....

Baby birds and a Tree guardian

and a Welcome to anyone joining in from the Turn the Page new online virtual exhibition
- well worth checking it out through the link here to see other contributors......

www.turn-the-page-online.com

......here are the two images I was printing today which may be the beginning of a new forest set as I feel I have enough kind trees already to offset the mad fools drowning - I might take a photo of the possible completed set tomorrow and post it up - and start printing some sick fools instead as well as more trees and other helpful supporting figures for a new batch.....

those who might feel baffled may need to go back to the post for March 23rd when this blog was begun - but otherwise just go with the flow.... just enjoy the pics....

I am printing in batches of ten as this works well with the way I print using my rollers like paintbrushes - after a while they can get too sullied with the other colours and it is also good to start again another time and see how differently they print on another session - they might work out better or I might like them more - or not.... and I can react accordingly - by recycling the first lot and starting again or accepting a new series with the new  colours sometimes - I have already printed one image in two completely different colours for different moods of sets as you can see from different days recently.

Birds of Earth and Air

These two probably work with the Ship of Fools set - part of the kindness of trees and other natural life; I am still in the forest but may move the next images gradually into a different one and continue using up the forest colours - it's even more important to be frugal now as haven't tried to order more printing ink recently....

I was listening to an interesting feature about Japanese music on radio 3 while printing and a phrase leapt out at me - a Japanese musician was saying  that Japanese art is based on a 'respect and fear of nature....' - sounded good, fear in a good way - I could understand what he meant, it fitted with my pack....

I am trying to tell myself that my steadier and not too frantic rhythm of working is respecting my physical body more too - I am not suffering too many repetitive strain problems yet despite daily non-stop tasks; it is so annoying when they actually make me stop  or work through the pain barrier so perhaps I am learning at last a better regime.... hope I don't speak too soon...

Denizens of the Forest

I am beginning to get the feel of how the other half of the set might work today and printed these off in these colours; more images to do tomorrow within this sort of range...

This weekend I among many others should have been exhibiting at Turn the Page Artists Book fair in the lovely airy atrium of the Central Library in Norwich, and catching up with old friends; a virtual show is being arranged and I will post up the link when I get it - my slot will just direct people to this blog. We are all hoping to meet up at the postponed fair this time next year instead - who know what tests, vaccines and developments might be in place by then; it was far less stressful having this event postponed for a whole year than the ones still hanging in limbo for the rest of the year but it is all sad as there was such a good year ahead planned.
Well the time is rushing by quite fast I find so I just take one week at a time and carry on working - at a slightly reduced rate possibly with all the enforced stops for supplies and phoning round to check everyone is ok and the religious daily walk - its just steady rather than manic, interesting to try it for a change as each day slides into the next......

Kindness of Trees

I am well into a new set of tree images now and just printing as I go and seeing what happens; if I start thinking too much the decision making process becomes counterproductive, although I did have a shuffle-around and think-ahead late afternoon before going back to a late spurt of printing ten of each - they'll get used for something - even if only for birthday cards....
here is a straw bear, a tree hermit of indeterminate sex and a benign tree guardian of some kind...
I am pleased with the way the straw bear's eyes can be read two ways with a slight change of focus..

the images have set off a new colour balance and they are also in a different style if they are going to be part of the previous set but I am not going to worry about it - yet

I didn't feel as angst-y as yesterday - it was a supermarket delivery day so always twitchy plus more online ordering and a dodgy internet connection to add to it - picking up 10 bars of 85% chocolate in a supermarket is one thing but ordering 2 weeks ahead with the choice of adding or subtracting up to the last minute is another, when they probably won't allow 10 or turn up anyway, leading to further future chocolate angst big-time...and no , I am not the size of a tank - chocolate is a basic survival mechanism, as taught by my otherwise frugal mother who maintained it is taken on all major journeys of exploration......
decisions decisions  take energy..... P very nobly donated a square from his stash to reduce stress levels.....

Half set finished

Finished last image of a half set today and thinking about balancing - I quite liked the blue/green set idea and the introduction of reds is good for variety but is quite strong -
 it is like an endless game of rummy - which set am I collecting and how do the overall strengths, colour and subject work out when laid out in a flush , or when seen individually in a pack...
I thought lock-down would clarify life but it is still all decisions decisions
and I have to decide whether to complete the pack of 22 with Fool Gets Sick images or the Kindness of Trees - both probably...
also started printing some other images today but the internet connection keeps dropping out so no photos have come through - tomorrow is another day.....publish this while the little green globe symbol is still - flickeringly - hanging on on there.....

printing with coloured backgrounds....

More images getting printed each day - this was a slightly complicated one - but fun setting up the backgrounds; soon I can post up the first provisional set of Ship of Fools/flooding cards, then I will crash on with the other sets and then see how they interact or fit together and what else I need to do.
Am having trouble with the internet connection dropping in and out so blogs will be mercifully short - not sure whether it is a fault here or just overloaded broadband generally but it is very annoying if you are in the middle of a vital food order and suddenly lose everything ....

more iced buns

Three more images done today in batches of ten which passes the 'amount that can be happily done in a day test' - bit of variety and a reasonable number in the batch - plus time for a walk and for an hour or so tearing up pieces of paper for tomorrow.....

In full flood...

printing full out now - doing in batches hoping that they will all meld ok  - its usually worth printing a smallish batch in good hope even if I have to modify afterwards and do some again - haven't decided on numbers yet or even which sets some images are in but once one has the ink mixed and gets into a rhythm it is best to just go with it....

they look like batches of iced buns...plenty of batches like this one scattered around now.....

Tidying to energise

...it was such a lovely warm sunny day I decided to tidy to energise myself ( often works) and as an excuse to be in our sunniest room with the window open ; but I did do some printing on a different paper and with stronger acrylic colour behind - should work fine - will also look better with lines around the images probably. Found some hidden treasures when tidying which we re-inspiring and also strips of paper from old projects - so have vowed to try and use them all up before I order any more paper - this is the right project for them ....
but still feel nervous and that I should keep stuff in reserve - what if there is now a world paper shortage?? scary thought...I did get some more wood today as I had used up so much....( both sides)(which I will regret as I start printing...when wet ink on both sides)

Ennui

I can feel a terrible ennui setting in but I started hand colouring in a few trial prints today - couldn't find my nicer watercolours so all a bit faint and feeble, but a start; I will try on a different paper tomorrow and paint some stronger acrylic paint underneath before I print maybe. They are quite different from the tarot set I was cutting before so I am pussyfooting around the feel of them; they will look different trimmed to a smaller margin and I could try a line margin so they look more like playing cards - or go for a different effect entirely.

Started playing with a few other images too from a different set, all a bit of a mish mash - just have to work my way through them in different trial ways until I see what happens best - so many to work on at once but fiddling with each one gives ideas for the next.
Did some cleaning to try and energise myself - it is sometimes part of the process and helps my subconscious to sort stuff out; but I sense other friends getting this lock-down ennui - the sense of losing track of the days - messing with bank holidays doesn't help even tho they are now a bit meaningless anyway, if the bank holiday is now a Friday my brain gives up, what happened to bank holiday Mayday Monday.

Now printing...

I started with the flood series - which may overlap with others - and these images which need careful proofing; a gentle beginning to see how they might best look before the ink builds up and it is more difficult to see how best the density of ink might lie; so - subtle differences in these groups of 2 and 3....when the ink first goes on it is easy to see how it looks against  the pale wood but subsequent -re-inking is more tricky when variations of thickness and tone are being tried out; perhaps hard to tell on this screen but its like spot the difference, a challenge.....
this isn't black ink - it is a dark colour I mix which is sort of black but with more depth of tone and chromatics, black can be a very thin colour ( or lack of it) - this was some I had left on my slab and still usable so I carried on with the possible set while I still had enough to look at them all together....

I did a few of each so I can start painting over them and get an idea of how they could look - then try on better paper and it always looks better if the colour goes on first and then the print on top....
some of the more emblematic images are much more straightforward to print, same layer of ink all over, but the painter in me can never stop playing a bit so that each print is a bit different....

Black Holes

New ones suddenly being discovered and they are getting nearer.
I was reading about them today in the Independent online.....
is that where my digital images go ? I can't understand why images I posted days ago seem to have suddenly disappeared off my blog - what is it with me and technology - I am sure I didn't dream them but now there is a little no entry sign in their place....

Apologies for my allusions - red shoes?? - keeps us all on our toes.... my version of string theory, everything is connected to everything else. Thank goodness I saw the amazing Kiefer exhibition of the same name at White Cube Bermondsey at the beginning of the year before lock-down - mind blowing.
The architecture of the Whale is engrossing - but unfortunately won't fit on a playing card.....but I may now attempt to read Moby Dick after meaning to all these years...

I think my body is telling me I have finished cutting for now...I have been sitting over a pile of woodcutting splinters like a demented hamster all day and finished the last ones for now....
I like showing them in threes because I can begin to see how they could fit together as a continuous story like those little landscape cards which can fit together however you arrange them...
and on the screen it doesn't notice that the last one uses the wood sideways with grain from side to side; it may not work but I have tried some funny new moves for the water and rain, neither naturalistic nor emblematic so probably between two stools ; Japanese woodcuts have it down to a fine art but the wood they use is harder fruitwood and more seasoned and crisper to cut than plywood....but its fun trying, and I like cutting with the side of the blade and I'll end up printing them a like a painter as I always do.....
hoover up the bits, I have started clearing the decks for printing, tomorrow is another day...

if anyone had told me earlier this year I would be spending hours some days washing groceries I'd have laughed bemusedly, no deliveries tomorrow mercifully.

Killing time without injuring eternity....

Prompted by The Whalebone Box I am now reading Philip Hoare's Leviathan, or The Whale - a lovely book which has been on my 'to read' pile for too long unread; it tells a lot about Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne,  and Thoreau too... who put himself into a two year self isolation, minutely observing the natural world around Walden Pond..... "seclusion charged his imagination. Thoreau revelled in the retreat of the day, and in the hours slowed by the calm surface of the water:
'As if you could kill time without  injuring eternity'."

I have found it far easier to sit drawing up ideas and cutting them than getting down to committing them to print - today should have been the day for clearing up and cleaning out the printing space and getting stuck in, but I again spent all day drawing new, re-cutting old, changing ideas, having new....
by my reckoning I have now cut around 50 more playing card blocks since lockdown and cut the new fool book - time to print...

I wanted to try this enigmatic image on the left - see how it will print, sort of wreckage on land, a village crumbling behind; and I re-cut the Fortitude emblem as I wasn't happy with her, clarified her lion head-dress hopefully...
which then led me to try cutting a very traditional alchemical emblem- the green lion swallowing the sun and a sinking moon - a partner for the straw bear perhaps ( won't go as far as red shoes) - the seven stars along his body give him rather weird tracky-b  effect legs and I am not sure he will really fit in but I enjoyed playing with him and he may be useful for something.....
I also need to re-cut the Hermit tree image, who may end more fed by his roots, possibly...
and there is also one more very simple ( and therefore difficult ) flooded tree image to cut tomorrow - it needed to be on a piece of wood with the grain going horizontal rather than top to bottom, so not sure whether this will look strange in a set or not- we'll see....

so tomorrow I may have to give my cutting technique digression,  for any of my printing group who might be reading this, as there may not be much to see  .....

Still cutting - a global view

I found a few blocks that still needed cutting - and also a few designs,so tomorrow will be a cutting day too, but I am really hoping to be printing them too soon; trouble is as I look back at he blocks I start wanting to change them and re-cut a few - may yet do that...

and of course I have left some bits on the the block that will probably need to come off after I see how they look printed.....

International Dawn Chorus day apparently

Well I am all for that - am a regular listener ( often not by choice...tho possibly sleeping better in lockdown, less stress not having to engage with the world so much?)

so am posting up some golden oldie Who Killed Cock Robin pics to celebrate , while I continue cutting.... both the original version and the later larger one-off pop-up...if any FPBA visitors scanning this today I find I still have one copy of the original version left (below at the bottom....any interest contact via FPBA website, don't think my buttons work here but you could try leaving a comment to see.....I also still have a few individual prints....)
I did say we needed a bit of colour....

can't beat a good book.......