Making 'Welcome Home', my Manchester argus butterfly linocut

During the pandemic, I spotted the inspiring story of the Manchester argus butterfly. This large heath butterfly had lived on the peatlands of Manchester until around 1850, but with industrialisation came the  loss of its habitat. The Manchester argus became extinct in the Manchester area. You can read all about it in this BBC story from May 2020.

I decided to base a new linocut design on the butterfly, creating a stylised image to complement my popular 'Hard at Work' Manchester bee linocut, designed in 2015. Both are hand cut from three plates of lino 25cm x 25cm in size.

'Welcome Home' original linocut by Carolyn Murphy

I started by sketching the rare butterfly from a range of available photos on the internet. Then I experimented with colourways and the structure of the design. I wanted the green of 'Welcome Home' to balance and complement the golden yellow of the bees artwork. After a few tests, I settled on the colour and the tones of the new design. I must stress that it is inspired by the Manchester argus - I did not set out to create the linocut as a true to life study.

Initial rough sketches

Early ideas

Below you can see the development stages, from cutting the plates, to inking the lino plates and early colour tests. I hope it helps to bring to life how this original multi-plate linocut is made. It was printed in my home studio using a Hawthorn press, onto Canaletto 300gsm off-white paper and is a limited edition of 50.

Cutting the plates & exploring colours

Printing colour 1

Printing the second colour

An early exploration of colours

Comparing tones - 'Welcome Home' final colour later became darker

I hope you enjoy looking at the story of the return of the Manchester argus to the Greater Manchester wetlands and let's hope it is settling in nicely to its old home after a gap of 150 years. I do like a happy ending!

To learn more about my work, please check out my website www.carolynmurphy.co.uk where you'll find my gallery online shop and links to social media.

My Print for Twitter Art Exhibition 2017 (#TAE17)

This year's Twitter Art Exhibition raises money for a UK children's charity Molly Olly's Wishes. The charity art sale is on Saturday 1 April - and I'm hoping my gecko linocut will help the cause.
I've included below some images of the postcard in development. Entitled 'Sticky Feet', rather unusually for me, it is a multi-plate reduction: 2 plates and 4 colours. I hadn't combined the multi-plate and reduction techniques before, so it was a little high risk! Fortunately I didn't have to resort to plan B and my gecko arrived safe and well in Stratford-on-Avon on time.

Above is the finished postcard, with all 4 colours. Process shots and some of the earlier stage images are below:

I printed on 300gsm card and cut the border off at the end to achieve and image 16 x 12 cm (postcard size) to allow for easier printing. The ink I'm using here is water soluble Graphic Chemical ink. I hope you enjoy seeing the image emerge bit by bit. The idea was prompted by the butterfly in the Molly Olly's Wishes logo. It reminded me of a trip to a butterfly house, where a gorgeous green gecko was looking on through glass. Later I looked into what geckos enjoy eating - you guessed it, butterflies were on the list!

To see more of my work, please check out my website: www.carolynmurphy.co.uk where you will also find an online Shop with currently available work. Thanks!