Creating “Three Bays” linocut
Original Print – Linocut on Paper
This seaside lino print is what's called an original print – it's made using lino and ink.
UK coast art
This landscape art is inspired by the UK coast, with its wide sweeping bays and multiple headlands.
It could be any part of the British coastline where the sea has carved a view like this. Three headlands here, recede into the distance while the sea splashes us in the face!
It's a view many of us see as we cast our gaze along the coast on those breathtakingly sunny days beside the sea. Days with endless cloud‑free skies, vivid blues, a brisk breeze, and hazy distant horizons.
Perhaps it's the ferocity of the Atlantic in the west, or the sudden surges in the North Sea to the east, during our winters that creates these multiple bays. Surrounded by ocean, our coast topography is continually shaped into wide sweeping bays and prominent headlands.
Peppered with coves, stacks, arches and rafts of rock, or filled with sandy beaches, our coastline is sculptured into romantic and magical places.
Printing “Three Bays” original print
This original print was put through the printmaker's press three times, each time with a different colour and more of the lino cut‑away.
It's an approach called ‘reduction-cut’ and one way of making an original linocut. It's a method with no road back if you make a mistake, so you have plan very carefully!
The third colour was individually painted onto the carved lino using a paint brush, rather than applied using a roller as is more usual. As a result, the sea has a great deal character and texture in each print.
Because each print has it's own distinctiveness it's called a variable edition. Prints with subtle individual character is often why collectors prefer handmade prints like mine.
Published: 2022 [Linocut] Paintworks Card Collection, Bristol UK, James Ellis Stevens Ltd.
Exhibited: 2011. Ferens Open Art Exhibition. Ferens Art Gallery, Hull UK.