The making of my Hellebore print

Like many of my floral prints the inspiration for this print came from my garden. Looking out of my kitchen window on this cold, wet, grey January morning the sight of the hellebores springing to life brings a welcome pop of colour to an otherwise dormant garden.

The pink one (sorry, I dont know its name) appears first, usually before Christmas. I love the subtle dark pink, pale pink contrast in the petals. The effect is stunning.

There is nothing subtle about Pretty Ellen, the next hellebore to emerge. With its lime green middle and speckled burgundy petals edged in white it makes a bold statement in the garden. It was this combination of colour and pattern that I thought would work well as a linocut and relief collagraph and was the inspiration for my print Hellebore.

I started by playing around with composition and detail. I wanted the print to be small 125 x 125mm so I knew I needed to keep the design fairly simple if I was to carve it accurately. I didn't want the design to be photo-realistic and was keen to stylise the seed heads and the pattern on the petals. The drawings below show my ideas. The one far right is the final idea.

I transferred the final drawing onto my ipad so I could play around with colour combinations. The accuracy of the drawing isn't important at this stage, it's all about the colour. I love using the ipad for trying out ideas. It's so accessible and immediate and feeds my spontaneity!

Once I decided on the colours I mixed up a small sample of each using printing inks. Then spent what seemed like an age printing the colours, comparing them to each other and tweaking them until I was happy. I found it was all looking too pink so I changed the petal colour from a pinky rose to a more purply claret.

I also added a collagraph texture to the petals. Here you can see one of my printed texture experiments and the piece of textured paper that was used in the final print.

Final print colour mixes

1. Chartreuse and white

2. Chartreuse and light green

3. Claret and white

4. Deep purple and chestnut

Hellebore is available as a limited edition reduction linocut and collagraph print and a greetings card in my shop.