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 66



so when you take on a little project like this, sometimes the inspiration and the enthusiasm lapse, and you're scrabbling around for stuff to draw and print. well, i was anyway.
so i had these little plans in mind for things that i could do if i was struggling for things to sketch. one option was to draw every animal i spotted, chimneys was one that i did get around to, and drawing an alphabet of fonts from shopfronts was one that i didn't.

this print has one of the classic stand-bys on it - drawing my own hands, drawing.
the bus windows were clogged up with snow-gunk, and there wasn't much to see in the bus that i hadn't already drawn loads before. so there you go.
the left hand is very pleasing; i'm less happy with the right...

and the bloke is just a guy who got on in chapel A... i've made him look a lot more sinister here than he was in real life :-)
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