I’m worried about Dodgy, our resident robin. I haven’t seen him/her for a few days now and so I’m hoping that, as robins are usually the first birds to mate that they are a ‘she’ and are happily sitting in a newly built nest somewhere. Yes, I am that person who lives in the countryside and anthropomorphises every creature she meets, am I stupid of the fact that we have sparrowhawks around and Dodgy already had a severe disability? No, I’m not, I simply choose to hope that she is off sitting on some eggs somewhere while I use her as inspiration.

Anyone who knows me well, or even not that well really, will tell you that I am gaga for the animal kingdom, constantly trying to rescue something or provide it with a safe haven to thrive and I seem to have a bit of an affinity with birds, I mean, have you seen my chickens lately?

And so, Dodgy continues to provide a beautiful subject for my recent series of printmaking experiments although I have changed my mind dramatically since last week. I wasn’t too happy with the drawing I started during last week’s session so I went back through the photos I had on my proper DSLR camera as opposed to my phone and found this, full of more character and a more interesting pose.

My photography is getting better, still not great but better than anything taken on my phone. This gives, I feel, much more scope for the mark making that I’m going to need for the plate and so that’s my starting point for this week’s broadcast.

The wafer thin lightbox that I was using in the demo can be found via the affiliate link here: https://amzn.to/3ttGaC4, I do find it useful, particularly if I am prepping things at night or have a couple of layers to look through, as was the case with the tracing paper today.

I’m not sure if I will be able to do any more to Dodgy before next week but the drawing is starting to take shape and the first plate run through the new press is very exciting, I’m looking forward to what this whole project has in store for me and being able to expand my skills back into making prints again. Until next week, Ali.