Greg Poole – Artist / Illustrator based in Bristol, UK

Making the swap from monoprint to woodcut on the gull theme got me thinking that I could rework some other monoprints. Something I’ve never tried before… seeing that although I’m copying what felt right in the monoprint it turns the image into something new.  So trying to copy what I felt was best in the monoprint pretty faithfully but going along with what the woodcut seemed to require.
The heron monoprint has gone off to Lavenham Wildlife Art Gallery and I half didn’t want to send it because it was a useful guide in the studio… (I tried making other versions and they didn’t work).

Swapping from monoprint to woodcut. determined to pursue the theme. Swings and roundabouts on the virtues of what the media give back but enjoying the more open space and sculptural feel of working with the woodcut blocks.

… playing with limited number of elements and seeing how they vary print to print… the background of this one ended up being very clean compared with the previous one that had lots of background ‘noise’ … so I put on the tint overlay but that has now really boxed in the rectangle which is the thing I most want to avoid… breaking the rectangle is a preoccupation.

Prints made either side of the SWLA exhibition PV on wednesday … easy to be thrown completely by seeing other peoples work but figuring best to try and hold the line.

More of the same… the approach is covering a perspex sheet with ink and then taking out negative shapes using different sizes of blade. Equivalent to using the gouge with a woodcut but a lot quicker/more direct.
I try to let things happen and let the early blocky shapes, that would be hard to read for an onlooker, dictate what happens next.
My aim is to leave more empty space but my tendency is always to fill the container…

Working a bit more directly from recent field sketching experiences from chew valley lake and slimbridge.  At Chew familiar inhabitants of the same bay… familiar inhabitants of 40 odd years and feeling I should know them better… At Slimbridge looking at the captive birds, or at least very close up visitors, feels more like human life drawing… and something refreshing in that…
The wild birds rendered relatively 2D when they are off in the distance, even when looked at through the telescope. When they are down around the kneecaps and you’re looking across their width/depth it is a different picture.
That alongside weighing up the virtues of monoprint vs. woodcut and so far monoprint is winning… partly because when its done its done… with the woodcut there is still the possibility of meddling.

3 interpretation board images recently completed for Glamorgan County Council. These will be sited at Rhoose Point nature reserve, the southernmost tip of South Wales.

Lane packed with fruit, sloes like small plums. Dogwood and haws as dense as I’ve ever seen them. Blackcaps and phylloscopus warblers nipping back and forth. A young bullfinch with drooling beak. Speckled woods the commonest butterfly with the odd small copper.
In the bay I’d come mainly just to enjoy sketching the common species. Heron wading up to its hips.  I missed the catch, just seeing a large dark brown fish disappearing down its throat. It then flapped off to a quiet corner to digest.
More than 20 Moorhens again… mostly gathered in small groups.
Later on a group of lapwings coming in and dispersing round the perimeter. Re-realising that one of the pleasures of drawing birds is trying to depict the way they unpack themselves into radically different forms.Then furling themselves back into a sleek, compact whole.