At the start of 2010 i found myself in need of a challenge, and so i embarked on a project to document every bus trip that i took during the year in the form of a lino print.

I'm an illustrator by trade, but i was so busy illustrating that I wasn't really doing much observational drawing any more. Plus I really fancied getting to grips with a new [ish] skill. And lino printing is a fairly easy thing to set up, at least to begin with...

I decided that each print would be A5, in a limited edition of 13, to celebrate the fact that the route i travel most is the 13/13A. It's a good job I don't live in Headingley and travel on the number 97 all the time...

Now the year is up and all the prints from the project are posted here, in journey order.

Some of the prints are a bit all over the shop if I'm honest. Some aren't even that good. Some are pleasing in places, and one or two make me very, very happy. Several of them have left me feeling utterly exasperated and seriously thinking of jacking the whole thing in.

But I didn't, and here they are. Inspired by Billy Childish, I have resolved not to think of them in terms of success or failures - they just are what they are and I've been trying to learn to do them better and to make something worth looking at...

Friday, February 11, 2011

Bus Trip 6


made from drawings done on a trip into town to see 'the lone and level sands', a community play in leeds parish church.

simon hall was there, and gave me a lift home [one less journey to document - ha!]

the text is getting better on these, and i'm not really using a scalpel or knife to cut the lines dead clean now, just the lino tools, which is good i think.

i drew a load of windows this time [i like the architecture in leeds - when you start to look up there are some amazing and very lovely details and designs going on, often in unusual places]
i wanted to sketch some shop fronts too, but the bus was moving to quick and whereas i used to be able to look at something and fix the details in my mind's eye very quickly [drawing them immediately afterwards] i'm out of practice these days and need more time to draw that sort of stuff...

the bus stop was interesting - illuminated inside, with a shadowy figure heralding the bus from the doorway. the guy in the hat was a well-wrapped-up workman in harehills. there's also an asian guy in a cap [again, well protected against the cold] and a youth who hung from the dangling hand-support things, both passengers on the bus.

the bus itself is ok, possibly not as well-executed as the headingley single-decker in no.5 though...

i'm a lot happier with the inking on this one. that's very definitely improving now...

and it was very, very cold.


No comments:

Post a Comment