cherry blossom – NANCY POWER PRINTS

Cherry Blossom finished!

Finished this just in time to take to Sheffield Makers Fair last Saturday. It took a few experiments to get the colour blue that I had envisaged but I am quite happy with this intense and quite saturated colour.

Here are the rest of the process shots. It is always pretty nerve wracking when you get half way through a reduction print and you think “mmmm, did I get that second and third colour right…?”. By then it’s too late and you just have to trust your instincts and go for it! Well, life would be boring if we always knew the outcome of everything we do!

Cherry blossom WIP#2…..

Sometimes I do wonder why I make small prints, they are so fiddly! I’m having to really concentrate as I’m only cutting very small bits away for each new colour.

The block is starting to look like the dog has chewed it. And as there is so little to ink, I am having to use a couple of runners each side to help ink the block evenly.

In my previous post I showed you the initial block and the first colour. Here are the next five colours. I think the image is finally starting to show (and I am definitely less nervous about this print!). Five more colours to go; two green, two brown and then the background. So that’s 11 colours in total!

I must get a wriggle on with this as I need it for next weekend at Sheffield Makers Fair!

2 colours

3 colours

4 colours

5 colours

6 colours

Cherry Blossom – work in progress

The cherry tree in my garden is bursting with flowers and buzzing with bees. I have been meaning to do a print of the blossom for years, so here are the first stages of this small print. It will join the other images in my Botanical series.

-This is the initial stage with the main block that I will reduce (on the left), which I have offset onto the second block (on the right) for the background colour.

-I’ve decided to print the flowers first then decide on the background colour later, as I still can’t make my mind up about that! It’s quite tricky to photograph this first colour as it is so pale and on very lightweight Japanese paper. I didn’t want to leave the lightest bits as white (i.e.the colour of the paper), as the blossom isn’t white, it’s a very pale pink.