Bus Trip 57

this print is a bit smaller than many of the others - not because of any great artistic thinking, but 'cos my stock of lino was running a bit low...

it's another view of an almost empty bus - when i've done these before i've used at least one additional colour and blocked areas of black - this is an attempt to see how it might work with line and a single colour...
i'll always enjoy the way that these ones make the bus interiors look like the inside of some futuristic spaceship.

well, to me they do, anyway...

Bus Trip 58

drawn on the bus on my way to jimmy's hospital for an annual clinic visit [nothing to worry about, honest!]
sometimes these short, quick journeys give me the best drawings to work from - maybe there's just not enough time to worry about it. anyway, this was a lass i saw walking past the bus.

i'm will always be very happy with this print...

:-)

Bus Trip 59

this started out as this very spidery pen drawing of a bloke stood in front on the bus.



then the plan was to create a two colour print based on this design [worked up in photoshop ready to transfer to the lino] - a bluey-greyish background with a black layer of line over the top to delineate the figure and the bus fittings...



but then during the printing of the background grey/blue layer i decided to leave it at that - i think it works well enough as it is... sometimes less is more :-)

Bus Trip 60

one of the smaller prints that i've done - it's 105x75mm.

but it felt the right decision to do it that size and i'm very pleased with it.
it shows the bus stop outside the big new[ish] 'clas ohlsson' store in town, where i pretty much always catch my bus home.
i like the big symbols from their window display - the way that they're totally out of scale with the waiting passengers.
they look like some kind of weird alien hieroglyphs or something.

Bus Trip 61

this is a girl i spotted outside thomas danby college on my way into town.
it's a good place for people watching, even from a passing bus, as the students hang around outside a lot and you get to see all the various youth tribes gathered together in one place.

when i was [a lot] younger, a shop near my saturday job in leicester had a pair of boxer's boots in the window and i really loved the look of them, whilst knowing that i'd never have the courage to buy and wear them in public.
they probably didn't do them in size 12 anyway

:-)

Bus Trip 62

a bloke i spotted leaning up against a bus stop on my way home from town.
it's pretty simple, but i quite like that.

i've been adding a little mars black into the colours that i'm mixing up for these recent prints and it seems to work well, muting them down a bit without muddying them too much.

and the lettering's quite pleasing on this one.

lettering, fonts, text etc...

One of the things that I like most about these prints is that they all have text on them. I’m fascinated by fonts and lettering, without necessarily being knowledgeable enough to choose or use them competently. I’d love to know more and just generally have a bit more skill in working with type.

Throughout the project I struggled with making the text white – cutting the letters into the block is a process seems more suited to formal lettering. Whereas cutting the letters out of the block seems to favour a less controlled approach where the tool dictates the form of the letter a bit more…

At times in this project I’ve thought I might make a bit more of the lettering; choose some more intricate fonts and really get into crafting the type, but I never quite got around to it. There’s a tension there because working against that desire to get into the more formal typographical side of things is the fact that I really love the way the more organic and freely-cut lettering works. Print 23 is one of my favourites, largely because the rough-cut text looks so great [to me]
And I love the way that the text can be made to wrap around and interact with the image when you cut it more roughly…

One thought that I’ve had is a project to make a Leeds alphabet – 26 letters in different fonts drawn form around the city. Maybe that might satisfy the typographical urge in me
:-)