Hoverfly
I was sitting in my local park on a spring afternoon when a hoverfly decided to land on my finger and say hello. As it hang out I was mesmerised by the minuscule minutia of its exoskeleton as was inspired to create a larger-than-life reduction print of it.
I hadn’t done a reduction print—where the same block used to print multiple colours, carving away at the block in between—since GCSE art. All my other prints in the meantime have been multi-block prints that used separate blocks of lino for each colour. As reduction prints layer subsequent colours on top of previous ones extra care and thought need to be taken to plan the order of operations.
As this was my first foray into the technique in 17 years I wanted to keep it simple and restricted the print to two colours (a choice helped by dichromatic subject matter). This was also my first time using oil-based inks in the period. The cleanup proved a lot easier than I remember, using sunflower oil and paper towels to loosen up the ink and remove it from the block.
This print was also an experiment with printed on a textured card stock. The patchy texture I think adds detail and interest to the piece. That being said, I found the registration between layers to be less accurate than the impressions on plain paper.
