Cow Parsley . . .

Cow Parsley
original linocut © Teresa Newham

It began with a walk on Harpenden Common, where this year the Cow Parsley (or Queen Anne's Lace, as it is more elegantly known) has been blooming profusely in the damp weather.  I made some little sketches, took photos, and drew up a design or two at home.

original sketches & photos
© Teresa Newham

My idea was a quick and simple monoprint - roll out one or two colours onto the inking glass and draw the design straight into the ink as we'd done in the first ever printmaking workshop I attended years ago.  Place paper over the ink, apply the usual pressure to the back of the paper and Bob (as they say) would be your Uncle.

rollering ink for the experimental monoprints . . .
© Teresa Newham

Except it didn't quite work out like that.  Maybe I just hadn't recalled the technique correctly; or perhaps I was expecting too much. I either produced pieces of paper so heavily inked that no design was visible, or with a background so faint that the images were almost useless.

. . .  which didn't work that well!
© Teresa Newham

But not quite useless, because the design was there.  Several designs, in fact:  so I cut my favourite into a piece of softcut lino I've had lying around the studio since I retired nearly three years ago (as happens so often, I'd never quite got round to trying it out).  The block itself looked pretty good, especially after the prints had been pulled . . .

the design carved into a lino block
© Teresa Newham

. . . and the prints themselves were just what I'd been trying to achieve!

the final, successful prints!
© Teresa Newham