Cider Orchard: My Next Monthly Print Theme
After an intensive month of tomatoes, I’m moving on to something completely different.
My next monthly print theme is Cider Orchard. 🍎
For the next 11 months, I’m giving myself a different theme each month and using it as a framework to explore, experiment and push my skills. My themes will all centre around food, produce, nature and wildlife — the things I’m naturally drawn to and constantly find myself sketching, photographing and noticing.
Part of the reason for giving myself this structure is quite practical: my ADHD brain absolutely thrives on having a project with boundaries. Rather than wondering what should I make next?, I can spend the month asking what can I discover within this theme? Printmaking itself can feel quite restrictive but I think once you get past that bottle neck it feels quite expansive!
And this month, that means apples.
From tomatoes to orchards
My tomato month ended with these reduction linocut of sliced tomatoes.
Find them in my store here
I stopped at seven layers. I had planned to go darker, but when I printed the next layer I really didn't like where it was heading. It became too graphic and outliny, and I felt like I was losing something I really liked about the earlier layers.
That decision has actually been one of the most useful parts of the whole process. I’m increasingly interested in the more painterly qualities I can get from reduction printing - letting colour, texture and overlapping layers do some of the work rather than relying on a heavy outline to define everything.
I photographed the tomatoes myself and kept returning to the reference photograph throughout the process. Working from real things, whether that's something I've grown, picked, cooked or found outside, remains really important to me.
And now I’m taking that same approach into the orchard.
Apples, blossom, cider and… moths
There are plenty of directions I could take this theme.
Apple varieties and their varied colours. Blossom. Leaves and branches. Fallen fruit. Cider. Apple crumble and custard, obviously. 😋 I even have a pink fleshed apple called ‘Red Devil’ on my allotment.
I’ve also got a cut-crystal tankard arriving this week to use as reference for a print involving cider, which I’m very excited about. Reflections in glass and crystal are going to be a fun challenge.
Making work from the landscape around me
The timing feels particularly appropriate because we're heading into harvest season.
Orchards are such an important part of the landscape around here, but across the UK we're losing traditional orchards and seeing agricultural land come under increasing pressure from development and land grabs.
I want to celebrate what we still have and as part of my planning process I’ll be getting out with my sketchbook, photographing fruit at my allotment, doing a little bit of scrumping in an abandoned orchard near me 😈 and of course a trusty pinterest board.
So, Cider Orchard begins now.
Eleven months, eleven themes, a lot of experimentation and hopefully some beautiful prints.
