More mezzotint masqueraders

…sorry for the alliteration, but the title describes just what I’ve been up to: continuing the making of some very small mezzotint prints. All the mezzotint plates and prints I have so far shown you measure 5×6 cm, or 2 x 2 1/4 inches. Small, and therefore fairly quick to make, though the whole process is still undoubtedly hard work on the hands! And so I am getting used to this technique before I embark on something more ambitious… and gather together some pennies to afford a large ‘pre-rocked’ copper plate – which costs many times more than the plain…

Sketches for the Poison Flower Fairies: the very kinky latex-clad fairy of the Caper Spurge

The last Poison Flower Fairy in my current collection (I have more possibilities, but I’m temporarily forced to break off from this macabre lot to get on with some other stuff)… the last one is a member of the Euphorbia genus. I had to include a Euphorbia, not because they are the most famous of poison plants, though they are undoubtedly poisonous, but because it was a Euphorbia-related visit to casualty which first gave me the idea for these paintings. So, there are these plants: Euphorbias, also known as Spurges, a vast genus of plants, wildly varying, including some very…

Sketches for the Poison Flower Fairies: Ricina, maligned and (usually) innocent

I’ve been a little distracted from the Poison Flower Fairies this week with this and that: etching, paperwork and having taken on a commission (more on that later). However, I’ve two more sketches still to show you, so here, for starters, is another plant with a bad reputation. The first of these is a curious creature, not an ancient evil like Monkshood, but rumoured to be assisting terrorists all over the world, sought by several international law-enforcement agencies on several occasions and never caught but once. Toxic, certainly, but dangerous? Guilty as charged? These things are less certain of this…

Sketches for the Poison Flower Fairies

I had an idea some months ago that a series on The poison Flower Fairies would be rather entertaining. Following on from my Flower Fairies go to Seed, a series which has so far amounted to a mere three paintings (all of which I have now sold), I am once again short on fairies… In fact, the idea for this series came to me following a pot plant-related trip to casualty… but more on that when I come to Euphorbias, in the meantime I thought I would start with a real nasty. This is Monkshood, or Aconitum Napellus: It’s a…