Lino Cut Experimenting with Mark Making

I used this scrap of lino to practice my delicate and detailed mark making. I wanted to explore with this scrap piece how easily I could produce curves and more complex shapes on a small scale. Sometimes I lost control of the tool and it cuts a sharp straight line... I could counteract this by concentrating on pressure and the angle of the tool, and as long as I focus on this, it is unlikely that the tool looses control. 

I have found a lot of Indian art, that I witnessed there, also artworks on display at the Bejeweled exhibition, included a lot of intricate, mostly floral, frames around the pieces. I wanted to experiment with this and also with cutting away the background rather than cutting out the line work, which is what I usually have done. This was a good experimentation and I found leaving the image and cutting away the background harder than the reverse way round. But it might look more effective with more negative space. 

Inspired by Karen Neal's lino cuts, and because nature is a theme within my project as it was a large part of my trip in India as well as everyday (non-city) life there; I decided to focus a small print on Kingfishers. Kingfishers were everywhere in the Kerala backwaters, as well as being on their branded beer. I created these lino cuts from the still life of the beer bottle I drew with biro in my sketchbook there. 

I am intrigued at which technique, drawing into the foreground or background of the image, will look more effective. I decided to do both, which also helped to create some depth with the plants in the cut, which will hopefully be present also in the print, because one of the birds is in front and so the cutting technique used here has been chosen to convey this background.

I chose to create this lino cut to practice my mark making and pattern skills with the tools and that specific lino. This lighter lino is softer and so is easier to cut into but also easier to loose control of. For this reason, I drew out the design in pen first. 

This pattern is inspired by a clothing embellishment from the Jat Sardars of Bharatpur, from the time of 1860. The noble men that wore the pattern that inspired my cut, had owed allegiance to the Maharajah. They would have been heavily armed with swords and daggers. I like using designs like this for inspiration because although they are intricate and 'swirly', the context behind them is strong, fierce and powerful. I don't like the western view that intricate patterns like this are 'girly'... that is a naive view. In folk art especially, details and little symbols have deep and often dark meanings; it is the viewers ignorance that renders the piece 'just a pretty swirly pattern'.