Birds and Printmaking

During the winter I tend to work in the studio, printmaking, and occasionally venturing out when I get cabin-fever. I found these White-fronted Geese on one such outing, and drew them as they grazed along the high-tide line. Later these sketches led to a screenprint made using paper stencils.




For me, the first sign of spring is the sound of courting Eiders. Their calls drift through my newly-opened studio window from the bay outside. This picture is a combination of a monoprint with cardboard shapes printed on top.




I try and let a lot of weeds grow around the edges of the garden - it's interesting to see what new combinations of plants will turn up each season. I particularly love the dandelions, and any other plant that brings goldfinches to feed outside my studio. This picture combines a monoprint on cotton fabric with acrylic paint.




In June we can tell that the mackerel have arrived when the gannets start diving off-shore. This is a screenprint using paper stencils and wax crayon as a screen-blocker.




Ravens seem to delight in the autumn gales. This family were playing with seaweed from the shore. To make this picture, cardboard shapes were printed onto an acrylic background.

Small is more amazing than you realised

Once I'd re-trained my gaze to look at the smaller animals around me, I realised that I'd been walking right past some beautiful insects - and some fascinating behaviour. In our local woodland I found Peacock Butterflies feeding on Devilsbit Scabious in a patch of sunlight.

When camping on the beach this summer, I noticed Painted Lady Butterflies resting on the lichen-covered rocks and feeding on thrift. I thought that these insects were flying around in circles, until I realised that they were all traveling in the same direction. There was a continual stream of butterflies coming in from the sea and fluttering northwards, on a migration of maybe hundreds of miles.



My daughter found the caterpillar of an Emperor Hawkmoth in a neighbour's garden. It's a bulbous-headed, many-"eyed" caterpillar, the colour of the soil - not very beautiful. It metamorphosed into a chrysalis, which we kept over winter. The moth hatched the following May. Its colours were startlingly beautiful. When we released it onto its food-plant, the honeysuckle, it almost blended in.



In August, Golden-ringed Dragonflies patrol the ditches between heath and oakwood in Taynish Nature Reserve. The closer you look, the more fascinating these insect seem. I'd love to look at them under a really high-powered microscope. If I'm not careful I'll find myself on a one-way Alice-in-Wonderland trip. Dragonflies are such fantastical creatures that sometimes they do seem unreal.




Between children and printmaking, there's not much time for domestic luxuries such as gardening. The weeds are growing up around the patio, and sitting out in the sun with a cup of coffee, I noticed hoverflies feeding on the flowers of a huge Sow Thistle. There seemed to be many different types - big and small, chunky and slight, all with different bar-codes on their bottoms. And for a weed, the Sow Thistle is a beautifully sculptural plant.

Insect collagraphs

Last winter, when all the insects had gone to ground and I too was holed up away from the wind and rain in my studio, I decided to do a series of insect collagraphs. My original idea was simply to make christmas presents for all my family, but the series has been very popular, and other people have been asking for these prints. Now the winter weather is closing in again, I plan to make some more.
At this time of year the Craneflies come into our porch, and if they're lucky, make it past the spider's webs and into the house to bumble about in the corners.




The only insects that I can be sure of finding at any time of year are the glossy Dor Beetles. They lumber around among the oak leaves on the forest floor in Taynish, our local nature reserve, where the oak trees cluster from hill-top to sea-shore.




So now I must get to work to make some new images.