Milton's Devil
Limited edition linocut (unframed)
Printed area 12.5 × 14.5 cm
Number of prints in the edition: 10
Milton’s Devil takes as its source three lines from John Milton’s epic poem ‘Paradise Lost’. In Book IV, having journeyed from Hell to look upon Adam and Eve, Satan overleaps the walled bounds of the garden of Eden —
“Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life,
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant”.
Cormorants are relatively commonplace where I live and I drew a good number of studies before deciding upon a pose for the bird and sketching a general composition. As I began work on the lino, the problem of light and dark reared its head, and it was the gouge itself that offered the solution — hiding the letters like fruit within the tree’s leaves.
Virtually all of the work on the lino itself was done using a fine v-gouge — with a small u-gouge taking on the work of clearing the white space around the top of the tree and the bird. The carving of letters is an intricate and slow act and, complicated here by the leaves, it proved slow but satisfying work. As is my practice, I found it helpful to rotate the block around the tip of the gouge rather than vice versa whilst carving.
I pressed the prints with a silver spoon, burnishing the verso (or blind side) of sheets of 250 gsm Somerset Satin paper to transfer the ink from the lino to the paper. Each sheet used is hand-torn to create faux deckles and is approximately 21 × 25 cm in size. The printed area of Milton’s Devil is broadly square, but the sheets are torn so as to allow the print to be framed, should you wish, at a ratio of 3:2 such that a large area of virgin paper appears above the cormorant. The ink used is Cranfield’s Seville Black traditional letterpress. It creates a warm and gentle finish.
Each print in the edition is individually numbered (from 1 through to 10), and signed and titled in pencil beneath the printed area.
Limited edition linocut (unframed)
Printed area 12.5 × 14.5 cm
Number of prints in the edition: 10
Milton’s Devil takes as its source three lines from John Milton’s epic poem ‘Paradise Lost’. In Book IV, having journeyed from Hell to look upon Adam and Eve, Satan overleaps the walled bounds of the garden of Eden —
“Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life,
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant”.
Cormorants are relatively commonplace where I live and I drew a good number of studies before deciding upon a pose for the bird and sketching a general composition. As I began work on the lino, the problem of light and dark reared its head, and it was the gouge itself that offered the solution — hiding the letters like fruit within the tree’s leaves.
Virtually all of the work on the lino itself was done using a fine v-gouge — with a small u-gouge taking on the work of clearing the white space around the top of the tree and the bird. The carving of letters is an intricate and slow act and, complicated here by the leaves, it proved slow but satisfying work. As is my practice, I found it helpful to rotate the block around the tip of the gouge rather than vice versa whilst carving.
I pressed the prints with a silver spoon, burnishing the verso (or blind side) of sheets of 250 gsm Somerset Satin paper to transfer the ink from the lino to the paper. Each sheet used is hand-torn to create faux deckles and is approximately 21 × 25 cm in size. The printed area of Milton’s Devil is broadly square, but the sheets are torn so as to allow the print to be framed, should you wish, at a ratio of 3:2 such that a large area of virgin paper appears above the cormorant. The ink used is Cranfield’s Seville Black traditional letterpress. It creates a warm and gentle finish.
Each print in the edition is individually numbered (from 1 through to 10), and signed and titled in pencil beneath the printed area.
Limited edition linocut (unframed)
Printed area 12.5 × 14.5 cm
Number of prints in the edition: 10
Milton’s Devil takes as its source three lines from John Milton’s epic poem ‘Paradise Lost’. In Book IV, having journeyed from Hell to look upon Adam and Eve, Satan overleaps the walled bounds of the garden of Eden —
“Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life,
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant”.
Cormorants are relatively commonplace where I live and I drew a good number of studies before deciding upon a pose for the bird and sketching a general composition. As I began work on the lino, the problem of light and dark reared its head, and it was the gouge itself that offered the solution — hiding the letters like fruit within the tree’s leaves.
Virtually all of the work on the lino itself was done using a fine v-gouge — with a small u-gouge taking on the work of clearing the white space around the top of the tree and the bird. The carving of letters is an intricate and slow act and, complicated here by the leaves, it proved slow but satisfying work. As is my practice, I found it helpful to rotate the block around the tip of the gouge rather than vice versa whilst carving.
I pressed the prints with a silver spoon, burnishing the verso (or blind side) of sheets of 250 gsm Somerset Satin paper to transfer the ink from the lino to the paper. Each sheet used is hand-torn to create faux deckles and is approximately 21 × 25 cm in size. The printed area of Milton’s Devil is broadly square, but the sheets are torn so as to allow the print to be framed, should you wish, at a ratio of 3:2 such that a large area of virgin paper appears above the cormorant. The ink used is Cranfield’s Seville Black traditional letterpress. It creates a warm and gentle finish.
Each print in the edition is individually numbered (from 1 through to 10), and signed and titled in pencil beneath the printed area.