Introducing botanical prints

It’s safe to say that I have been very excitably printing over the past few weeks, since I started my lino printing adventure! When I first started lino printing, it was both exciting and daunting, a bit like starting with a blank sheet of paper. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t just printing anything but equally that I wasn’t waiting for the perfect design because, let’s face it, that doesn’t exist!

I started experimenting with designs inspired by nature. A lot of my lampshade designs have a botanical feel, so it felt like a nature evolution of the ACD range.

Every design starts with a little sketch in my sketchbook to try out what works. Then I build up the designs by trying some variations on a theme.

Then the final part of the process is to look at how these individual designs merge to make one cohesive pattern. This often happens through a bit of trial and error, rotating different prints and seeing whether it looks best to have it as a more random design or a repetitive pattern. An example of this is below:

A lot of this is about experimentation; experimenting with the positions of the prints and the angles where they look best. Also, which prints go together and which simply don’t! Sometimes you need to start to print to see where you need to create another design to bring together the overall look. I want to share the good designs as well as the no so good, such as the below! I’m not happy with the below design - it doesn’t flow well/give a good overall pattern, but I had to give it to find that out.

Sometimes, just a single print repeated looks most effective, like my fern print below. When doing a single print pattern, consider the positioning of the repeat. For my design below, I used an offset diagonal repeat, given the size and sprawling nature of the fern itself.

Give it a try and see what you think!