Flower sketches in spring

Amongst the other things I’ve been working on so far this year, I was asked to make a print of a lily by a thoughtful husband whose wife loves lilies but he can’t buy them for her because they make him sneeze, so he commissioned me to print one that wouldn’t bring out his allergies!

I had so much fun mixing just the right shade of lily pink!

Once the ink was mixed, it was time to roll it on to the block for the first time. Exciting. And pink. So. Very. PINK!

In fact, I had so much fun mixing ink colours that weren’t black, this one little lily led to a series of “lino sketches” of other flowers I saw in early spring.

As the days were growing appreciably longer, I decided to celebrate the return of the light after the Winter Solstice with these stripey crocuses. One of the first cultivated plants that seems to appear reliably on cue in spring is the pretty crocus, often where it was not originally planted—these appeared in the middle of my neighbour’s lawn!

And then the Anemones appeared. My Grandma once told me that my decidedly unromantic Grandfather would always bring her a bouquet of these beautiful flowers in spring, so this is an ode to the two of them!