Sometimes things just don’t quite work out as well as you hope.

This was always a long shot. Before, when I’ve tried lino cuts, I’ve cut away the background. What’s left is what you see in the print. I’ve had some moderate success, the main limitations being the quality of my drawing.

This time, I wanted to print in relief. In other words, I wanted to cut out the objects I wanted to appear in the print so that they would appear in contrast to the ink background.

So, I drew some dandelion seeds and used a very fine gouge to cut them out, like so …

Looks quite nice, really.

Then I tried to spread and roll some ink: first white and then black. I used an old wooden pallete which is not ideal. The ink is old and very viscous and I wasn’t sure how much to use or how thinly it had to be rolled out. Then I wasn’t really sure how much to roll on to the lino, or even whether that’s what I should be doing. Then I placed the paper on top and rolled it onto the lino with another roller.

Here’s the best two prints. the others were pretty bad.

I need to read up on how to do this. Anyway, it was an interesting exercise although I could have done without all the cleaning up afterwards.

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Some time ago, I wrote about my filmed reunion with my old acting pal, Donall (now Pastor Happy) Murray. Well, the bloke shooting the documentary, Colin McKeown, has written and is directing a low/no budget film and he’s cast both Happy and me in it. Exciting! Today, we both went along to meet him to chat about the roles and improvise some of the scenes. It was fun and, although the improvising was a bit scary, it felt good to act and to begin the process of creating a character. I’ll keep you in touch with developments.