Peas and artichokes

We have been out in the garden enjoying the sunshine this week, plotting new ideas for various prints and keeping a close eye on all our little vegetables. Today we harvested our first pea pod! Hooray! It was a Hurst Green Shaft, and it was delicious - why bother cooking fresh peas when you can just eat them straight out of the pod? Like green smarties, only better.

Inspired by all this vegetable growing I did a quick watercolour sketch of some artichokes yesterday (not grown by us, but bought from the local farm shop instead). We've been trying to decide what kind of print we could turn my little painting into - Jon thinks it would make a good wood engraving on one of our tiny little 2 inch blocks, and I think it would make a nice woodcut.

I think we might end up doing both!

A new photograph of an old print

This week I have been slowly re-scanning some of our prints and taking some nice new photographs of them to add to our Etsy listings. It's a slow process, and the only one I've done so far has been the green TLR camera print, which I think looks rather nice on top of our new bookshelf. The new improved listing is here, and more will follow in the next few days!

We had a jolly day out in London on Monday - Jon had a work meeting, and the office is right next to St James' Park, we followed the sound of the band up to Buckingham Palace and watched the Changing of the Guard (from behind a very large crowd of eager tourists).

Whilst I'm beavering away on jazzing up our Etsy shop Jon has been busy working on a new wood engraving. At the moment he's still sketching the design onto the block - more photos to follow before he starts cutting!

Busy Busy

We have had a busy couple of weeks, but sadly without much time for printmaking! We spent the last two weekends at my parents house enjoying the sunshine and their big garden. Our own is looking splendid and everything is romping away.

We did find time to set up our new shop on Dawanda - a European site for lovely handmade things (a bit like a European version of Etsy). We haven't got all our prints listed in the shop yet, but hopefully they should all be there by the end of the week. The site is priced in Euros, and during Euro 2008 you can get an 11% discount in participating shops (including ours!) - the discount is applied automatically but is only available whilst matches are being played.

We had a nice surprise this week when Jon's little Penguin print turned up on a cool crafty blog that I enjoy reading - thank you Lupin!

To make up for the lack of printmaking related photos, here is one of Hal falling asleep in the sunshine instead...

Cock-a-doodle-doo

This weekend I have finally managed to find the time to finish my cockerel print - carving out the final layer and then printing a lovely dark blue colour. Jon helped with the printing when he wasn't out in the garden, and we're both really pleased with how he has turned out. If only we could have a real one of our own! Maybe one day...

We don't have the space at home for a proper studio so all our printmaking activities take place on our dining room table (helpfully covered by a wipe-clean striped oilcloth). My favourite place to sit and carve is in the chair opposite the window, which gets the most sun. Everything gets moved to one sie of the table (or onto the floor) when its time to print, so we often end up having to eat our tea on our laps because the table is covered in wet prints and other printing paraphenalia.

We've interviewed a fellow printmaker, Ellen Shipley, for the Prinsty (Printmakers of Etsy) team blog - read it here.

It has been very hot and sunny here for the past couple of days, which has meant lots of time in the garden tidying up and planting things out. It's all looking lovely and tidy out there now. This is the first year that we have tried our hand at growing strawberries. These ones are in a hanging basket outside the back door, above the herbs. I've got all my fingers and toes crossed that they ripen!

A wet bank holiday weekend

Another wet bank holiday weekend here (although it was sunny yesterday, so Jon got lots done in the garden), so we have been stuck inside with nothing to do but carve woodblocks, print, eat toasted fruit loaf and drink plenty of tea.

I have been busy carving and printing the next layer of a square print of a cockerel. The background colour and the first layer of his feathers are all printed, so today I did some cutting before printing the next layer of feathers - a dark orangey-red. It is working out very well at the moment, but will probably take at least a couple more weekends work before I manage to finish it.

Jon is busy working this weekend, so hasn't had much time for art - but he is busy coming up with plenty of ideas for his entry for the 71st annual exhibition of the Society of Wood Engravers - the submission date for entries is in the first couple of weeks of July and both wood engravings and other types of relief print can be submitted.

Yesterday, when it was still sunny, Jon took a lovely photo of one of our home grown alliums. I only cut one to bring into the house but now I wish I'd cut them all as they have now taken a bit of a battering from the rain...

And with these pencils...

...I shall do great things!
New prints from both of us today - a pot of pencils from Jon, and a little pansy from me. Both were done on lino - our first lino cuts for a while. It was strange cutting lino again after doing so many woodcuts! It seemed much harder to cut (whereas I used to say that about wood), and it makes our hands smell of secondary school art classrooms. But, we still enjoyed it!

I have also got going on another woodcut of a rather splendid cockerel against a sagey-green background. The background is all printed, and the outline of the bird is cut out, so hopefully this afternoon I'll find time to print the first layer, which will be a glorious orange. Jon is busy creating great things with his pencils and pens, and has a whole stack of ideas for prints for the next couple of months.
In the meantime we are going to have lunch in the garden and enjoy all the glorious sunshine we've been having!

Printsy!

Printsy is a new Etsy street team to promote the work of all the wonderful printmakers on Etsy!

The team has a new blog which will feature lots of interesting interviews, articles about printmaking and much more. There is also a Flickr group, and a wonderful treasury curated by Sonia aka She Rides the Lion made it onto the front page of Etsy.

Hooray!

We are really excited to be a part of it and there are lots of very talented printmakers involved.

There hasn't been much time for printmaking at Spoonergregory Acres this week - we have both been busy with our day jobs. For me that meant taking a group of students from the Landscape History course at the University of East Anglia around the park at Wimpole Hall - the sun shone, lambs frolicked, and everyone (apart from me) saw Joanna Lumley on the home farm!

Here we are at Wimpole talking about the location of one of its many avenues. This is the final week of the university term so from next week I'll have plenty of time for printmaking (and my thesis, naturally).