Lino carving, dots and cirlces!

I've had an unexpected break from both blogging and art. I got caught up with birthdays, kids and family visiting and haven't created a thing in nearly 10 days! Even though it was really good to see our family I'm definitely ready to get back to my circles and dots!
I did foresee a short break so before it all got busy I spent the day creating a new lino cut.The cut is in part a continuation of the ripple effect concept I started exploring in the 'chain reaction' series for the International Collage Exchange. The resulting lino cut is below.

This is my first version....my daughter asked if I was thinking of fingerprints! It was too 'busy' for me so I removed some of the lines and ended up with....

I  like this version better, I wanted to create a print that reflected a concept I was playing with- that ideas and thoughts are like seeds. We either plant them out and nurture them or we leave them in infertile soil.

The curved lines around the seed illustrate the 'ripple effect' that takes place when we make choices. Every idea, thought or action or inaction creates it's own ripple but it all starts in the middle, with the seed.

This is a 'hat' print. It's the done on a serviette using a wet lino block. (hat = happy accident technique.)

I couldn't leave the print alone...as you can see I turned nearly all the prints into ripped seeds for collage work. I guess I could have saved myself a lot of work if I'd thought of this first! I think most of my prints will end up being 'downsized' in this way. Sometimes I take the long way but better to have gone the long way than to have not made it at all:)

I promised some circle posts from other artists in my last posting and here they are! Mick Mathers and Robyn Gordon are 2 of the artists kind enough to share links to their 'circle' posts with me to repost here.

Mick is a talented digital artist and through his art I've learnt to appreciate the art of digital collage. His daily collages are often part of bigger series, related to each other in their subject likeness but always different in their appearance and techniques. I enjoy the diversity of Mick's work and his ability to make a digital work appear either earthy and mysterious or bold and structural like the image below.

This artwork is part of his series "Reinventing the Wheel." Please take the time to click on over to check out the series as well as the rest of his blog!

Robyn Gordon is an artist who fascinates me! Her carvings are wonderful, earthy, rustic and soulful. Little niches filled with treasure and soft rounded curves that are beautiful to look at...and I imagine even more so to touch! Robyn also has a knack for putting together posts that honour the work of others and the link she has shared is one of those. I recommend you make yourself a coffee and head on over to Africa for a while! Robyn's 'spots and dots' post can be seen here.

Thanks Mick and Robyn! If you have a link of your own you'd like to see here it's not too late. Just let me know in the comments section.

Next posting: Fabulous Mail! I've received my swap items from LaWendula and my collages from the ICE exchange.