The leaves are coming out

I haven't written for a while...., and the summer has arrived at last.  It was quite late.  Many leaves are now growing quickly to catch up and to enjoy the short summer.

The ash tree in our front garden, which has had a massive pruning in April.  It looked very odd and bleak, but now young leaves are thriving from the pruned branches. 

 And,  as usual between the spring and the summer, a couple of blue tit nested in the bird box at the trunk of the ash tree, flying from branch to branch, perching on the roof of the nesting box, looking into through a small whole (Is a mum-to-be already sitting on eggs inside?).  The tiny blue tit is very busy.

Summer is coming!

It's now in May!  After the long chilly spring, the summer is approaching to the South Wales.  At once many flowers have started blooming here and there.  Though, only a few common toad flax's sprouts are coming out of the soil.  In the front garden, now!, early dog violet are blooming, which bloom usually in April.  The plants have delayed their growth schedule a couple of weeks (even a month), but I hope they catch up soon by the summer comes.

By the way, I have taken part in a 2-days brush-up workshop for screen printing over the weekend.  (Hurray, tomorrow is a bank holiday.)  I have learnt screen printing in my student time, many years ago.  But I didn't remember how to do it precisely; perhaps the method might have changed.

But, it hasn't changed much.  As we proceeded the screen print, I was gradually remembered how to do it!  


I brought one of my latest paper cut as a try how to transform it onto screen prints.  We were allowed to make prints up to A3 size.  So I brought an A3 size black paper cut work.  All the flowers I cut out from the paper were grown in my garden.  In fact, it doesn't matter to see this picture up-side-down or from whichever side.

My Summer Garden 2013

(paper cut, black paper, A3)

I tried 2 coloured prints and 1 coloured prints on the second day.  At first I separated the picture into 2 parts with Photoshop.  For the 1st layer yellowish colour was used, fully covered with the colour all over except clouds in the centre.  The 2nd layer was practically the same as the original paper cut, and coral orange was used.

My Summer Garden Orange 2013

(Screen Print from original paper cut, 2 colours, water-based acrylic colour, white cartridge paper, A3)

My Summer Garden Green 2013

(Screen Print from original paper cut, 1 colour, water-based acrylic colour, white cartridge paper, A3)

Without great guide and a lot of useful suggestions by Jude, who led this workshop, I couldn't have enjoyed much.  Thank you so much, Jude!

(The workshop was held at the Printhaus, Cardiff.  Click the name, left, or see the Link List at the bottom of this page.)

A big trim at last...

There had been young two trees, sycamore and ash, in a big garden many years ago.  Some decades ago the big garden was divided between these trees, and a new house was built on the ash tree side.  They grew every year and gave shade for the houses on the both side and rests for birds.

But their branches became overwhelming.  In the small town facing the Bristol Chanel it was often windy.  The trees became a nuisance; the branches fell down over the roofs when the storm came, the leaves in the autumn fell down on the roofs and stopped the rain drainages, their shades prevented other plants growing etc.....  The most dangerous possibility was that these trees fell down one day on the houses next to them.

The big trim was needed for them before they came back to life.  My neighbour decided to get rid of the whole tree on his side, sycamore.  We decided to keep our ash tree but with a lot of trimming.

Last week 4 tree service men came round in the morning.  It was so quick until the sycamore tree was cut into piece and disappear from my sight.  There were a lot of pieces of trunk and a big pile of small branches left on the ground.

They came to our tree around noon.  After only one and a half hour or so, our ash tree was drastically trimmed down.  It looks bleak and probably will stay not much different from now  this year, but will grow back to normal in a couple of years.

'We took care of your bird box', one of the tree men said to me.  I noticed in the next morning a pair of blue tit going to move in.  The spring has come!

It looks a bit bleak.

English Oak with leaves (2nd of 3: Tree&Leaves series, A5)

The first one of the trilogy was published on 11/2/2013.  (Turkey Oak)

Today, I'm going to upload the second one.  (The third one will be uploaded some time later.)  This is English Oak.  English oak is so common that it's seen everywhere in the UK.  The one I made this print stands on a small field in my town.  English oak can be quite massive, but this one, I would say, is middle-sized.  I liked the balanced form of its trunk.  Its branches were growing down almost onto the ground, but the thick trunk holds them strongly.

English Oak 2012

(Japanese vinyl relief, 2 rounds with 2 colours, A5)

Happy Easter!

It was sunny on the Easter Sunday yesterday.  We went for a walk in a woodland near by our town. The air was still cold although we felt warm in the sun.  The summer time has just started yesterday in the early morning.

We walked into a deciduous woodland, mainly of beech, where the sunshine came through the bare branches and it was sheltered from the cold wind.  When looking at the bare branches, we could see tiny buds awaiting the warmer days.

The young green leaves of English bluebells were coming out here and there.  Primrose scattered the pretty cream yellow spots in the woodland.  A bunch of wild strawberry had tiny tiny white flowers on a warm sunny slope.

  

It was a quiet Easter Sunday afternoon.  Only a few people with dogs passed by.  Trrrrrrr.  !  A woodpecker was drumming on a tree.  We could still see the hills under the crisp blue sky through the bare trees.

London Plane leaf

This spring is awfully cold.  It's almost at the end of March; the early cherry blossoms should've been over but their buds stopped growing.  The crocuses in the front garden have still flowers.  It's odd.

When I got up today morning, the sky was grey and stormy.   The thermometer at the house  showed minus 2 ℃!  Here in the south Wales it's very rare even in the middle of the winter.  The BBC weather forecast said it would remain cloudy and cold.

So, I ended up to stay at home and finish my work.  There were distractions in between (cooking; I made handmade pasta, children fighting, etc.) as I usually do not sit at my desk on Sunday.  But finally I finished the last panel today on the prints.  It had taken almost 3 month since I made a draft in January.  I'll take pictures of the print some time soon and put it on this blog later.

Anyway, I'd like to put my work one by one.  This time is a small print of a London Plane leaf.

I made prints of its bare tree.  (See the blog on 11/12/2012)  London Plane has large fan like leaves and hairy fruits (followed by red hairy flowers in the early summer) in the summer.  These trees are seen often in towns.

This work was created quite early as a colour study; I tried layering different colours on the leaf and the background.  But it's hard to distinguish the subtle colour in the picture.  

London Plane Leaf

Plywood relief printing, water based ink, 6 panels, 6 colours, A4, 2011

Such a name for a tree! 'Bastard Service'

You can find such upside-down broom-like trees at town roadsides in the winter in my town.  At the beginning of the winter they have plenty of red berries, but they disappear as the time goes.  The berries are birds' favourite winter food, of course.  When all the berries gone, the spring must come soon!

In fact, I hadn't doubted they were rowan tree as the shape of branches in the winter (no leaves) was similar to rowan.  But I found out eventually their name, 'bastard service' in my tree guide book (as noted somewhere else before: Colins Complete Guide to British Trees, this book is brilliant to identify many spices of trees in the UK).

Bastard service is ' natural hybrid of common whitebeam and rowan', which is why I misunderstood.  When looking at their leaves, it's obvious.  Common whitebeam has cherrytree-like round leaves and rowan (mountain ash) has rough comb-like leaves like ash tree.

And yet, I'm still wondering who on earth gave them such a name....  There is service tree ('service' comes from sorbus, the Latin name)  And, the word bastard maybe not related to the straight meaning of itself, bastard, we usually think.  I looked up the Oxford English Dictionary and 'bastard wing' caught my eye.  Accordingly 'bastard wing' is a group of small quil feathers on the first digit of a bird's wing.  Ah!  It might be because of the shape of their feather-like leaves.

(from my sketch)

Anyway I like the bastard service tree with red berries (in November), any matter how they are called.

Bastard Service Tree

(Asian plywood relief, water-based ink, 3 pannels with 8 colours, 

A4, 2012)