Children’s book illustration project

This is exciting news for me. Over the past 3 months, I have been working on a children’s book illustration linocut project. This is a big tick from my bucket list!

There are 12 images in the book.  I am printing them as reduction linos. Each lino has at least 10 colours each. I have a short deadline so spending long hours/ nights in the studio. Here are some of the prints in my rack drying – 40 prints here. So I have 12 images to by a full-colour reduction printing method. I am printing editions of 10. Each image has about 10 colours. So that is roughly 1,200 times I have to rub with a spoon (I don’t have a press). Probably shouldn’t do the math as it makes me tired and worried as to whether I will get it done by the deadline. I will have great arms by the end and a very shiny spoon!

Prints drying on a rack near my door.
Prints drying on a rack near my door.

To add to the math for this project – it takes me an hour to print an edition of 10 (depending on how much ink is on the Lino – the more ink the longer it takes to get an even colour). It takes about an hour of cutting between each print on average (the Lino below took 4hours last night due to the detail). About 3 hours per Lino to draw the design on. So that is 120 hours of printing, a minimum of 120 hours of cutting, 36 hours to draw onto the Lino and 80 hours of initial drawing and planning. So that is 356 hours. Phew!

Go to my portfolio page to see some of the prints from the book. Editions of the prints are for sale.

Feeding out to cows after the fire.
Feeding out to cows after the fire.