The Isle of Harris

So, you've just read another of The Mysterious Mr Pepper Corn's instalments and are probably wondering to yourself how you can become just as awesome. Well the answer to that is to copy everything he does - I can assure you that all the stunts performed by him have been tested by professionals beforehand and they managed it so I'm pretty sure you can too. Of course, I have my own format of awesomeness so I don't need to copy him and if you feel the same way about yourself then forget about following in the footsteps of The Mysterious Mr Pepper Corn, he should be following in yours. 

Anyway, I'm getting side tracked, what I should be telling you is that The Mysterious Mr Pepper Corn isn't the only one who travels around. It was only a week ago that I got back from a ten day trip to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. I left on the 25th of July and travelled over three days. 

Our first stop took us to the North Pennines (beautiful) where we stayed at a youth hostel which we had previously given the name Lindsey Land Resort (not so beautiful). It was a very interesting building (old school building) with a bowing roof just over the living space and random unmounted-mounted rams heads which had a funny habit of finding their way into people's beds "ahem". There we did a range of activities for which my favourite was gorge walking. All you did was chuck yourself off of rocks into the river so that proves that my awesomeness does exist, my theory that stunts can be carried out by anybody and that the simplest things can be fun.

Now after that it was another day's travel up to Glen Coe in Scotland. It was disappointing that we didn't hear as much of the accent as we liked and from what I saw, it appears that Scotland is inhabited by more Irish and Australian folk then it is by actual Scottish people but hey ho, everyone there was friendly. It was the third day into our travels when we did the high ropes activity, now I'm not one for heights but I decided that I would suck it up and have ago. It turned out that only me and mate in my group actually did it (and the only peeps in our whole explorer group to do it three times). Then it was on the road again (as well as the sea) until we got to the Isle of Harris.

       

Leverburgh (this here town) was lovely, with the exception to the kamikaze lamb which attempted to knock my friend off his bike when going down a steep hill - well only in the Outer Hebrides folks. I was ready for the sheep, I was prepared for the odd cow but not for the lone horse which popped up randomly outside the youth hostel, or for the dog which continuously infiltrated our walls just so it could get attention. We spent five days there with two lazy days at the beach and around Leverburgh which was a nice rest from the activities that we did, sea kayaking and sailing included. We then returned to Glen Coe and Lindsey Land Resort before getting home at 10 o'clock in the evening.

All in all a very exciting trip thanks to Gemma and Steve. I should be writing another post soon.

Bye Y'all

Will

   

P.S that blogger who I've got breathing down my neck as I write these posts tells me that I shouldn't encourage people to do outrageous things so of course think before you do things, don't copy anything that could cause harm to yourself or someone else, don't blah, blah, blah...the list is endless, just be careful, at least until your old enough for me not to care.

Unicorns?! Oh and Printmaking

So I've just created a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/willbakerillustrator for the facebookies among you) and all is going great. I've had many likes which makes me jump up with excitement every time I see someone new has entered my midst and a fair few people are interested in what I'm doing. Of course I advertise new posts on Twitter and Facebook so people can read these little insights of my life and many people have come up to me in the past few days and informed me that they've read my blog and thought it was funny. Many people have said they'll comment and haven't "ahem" but don't you worry, I'm patient and the likes on my page are a brilliant substitute.

Anyway this post isn't focusing on my Facebook page, brilliant as it is no, this post is kinda focused on unicorns and printing. You may be wondering why unicorns, well I'll explain. Today someone came up to me and said they had read my blog...are you with me so far...good, so anyhow they also said that it would be more interesting if I involved unicorns so here you go L.W. here's your unicorns.

This is an amazing video I have watch countless times made by the also amazing SecretAgentBob. So now that I've got the unicorns out of the way I can start on what's really important.

I have just started my D of E (Duke of Edinburgh award) and in my skills section I chose "Relief Printing" as I enjoy it and admire the work of printers more than any of the other art forms. Doing this has given me a reason to explore different forms of relief printing, one of which is linocut. This requires you carving a corky material called linoleum with a range of different sized knives, U and V tools to create a raised surface that will pick up the ink and transfer it to paper. I will describe the process of producing the block now and the inking stage later.

For this I first mapped out my design in pencil on the lino block to give me a guideline as to where I should and shouldn't carve.

 

 

This is of one of my chicken which had been scratching around in the daffodils last weekend and I always thought of April has having daffodils so there's the link.

 

 

Next I started to carve and so I have to be serious here and inform you of the risks - knives are sharp - there's my safety reminder so I may continue. I carefully cut the design so that what is left is what will print. I do this by using the V tool to mark out the edges and clearing the smallest of spaces while I use the U tool to clear away the large spaces. I push the tools away from me and at the same angle to slice off a clean strip. If you apply different amounts of pressure to the tool it will go deeper into the lino and consequently the slice will become wider. I do this until my design is the only surface raised from the cleared areas.

 

 

 And this is what you get as well as this:

 

 

 

A load of sliced lino but you don't need to worry about that as long as you remove it before you start to print you know, just to stop it from ruining everything.

 

Okay so that's all I've got for you in this post but there should be a new one on soon so in the meantime, feel free to comment, I look forward hearing from you.

 

See ya.