Carnation Lino Printing

Carnations

Woah, so six months is kinda a long time to go without posting...

Today I thought I would show you some of the art work I completed last year in lower six.

Carnations or Dianthus Caryophyllus are one of my favourite flowers. Carnations have a history that dates back more than 200 years, so it is not surprising they are littered with symbolism. White carnations suggest pure love and good luck, light red symbolizes admiration, while dark red represents deep love and affection. Purple carnations imply capriciousness, and pink carnations carry the greatest significance, beginning with the belief that they first appeared on earth from the Virgin Mary's tears – making them the symbol of a mother's undying love. Carnations are one of my favourite flowers due to the range of colours you find them in, to me they are the true snowflakes of flowers.

For A level art, we were given a task to change size and play around with scale. From this I looked at creating smaller drawing of a carnation, which then was turned in a lino print. From this, I then did test prints before I created a larger carnation out of the smaller ones. The final piece would be smaller carnations to create a larger image.

This is the carnation print

Test prints which experimented in a range of colours

The final piece of one carnation out of smaller carnations

Creating the final piece was incredibly difficult as I had to work out where the fold of the petals were going, and then work backwards from myself so that the print would come out the correct way. Instead of using a traditional roller, I opted for a paintbrush to place the ink in the specific places I needed it to go.

Leave your thoughts in the comments below about this, have a great day! :