Tag: bird

A Box for Bird Hide and Stickers for Pigs

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Things have been really busy this spring with the very good bookbinding course at City Lit and general print experiments based around ancient grains and their production and more pig progress. One of the projects I worked on at the bookbinding course was a box to contain the little “Bird Hide” book I made a couple of years ago. See here https://pencilandleaf.blogspot.com/2017/02/bird-hide.html

I wanted to try making a box to hold a book, so I printed some calico for the bookcloth and some Japanese  paper for the interior covering material.It’s not exactly difficult, it just relies on very accurate measuring and a methodical approach, building a tray, the box top and the inset, then preparing the base and side and front cover with an extra inset for the inside of the cover and then assembling it all.. and just hoping it fits. It did! Hurahh!

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The structure of the box inside.

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The front cover with the printed bookcloth and the box structure.

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The finished box interior. The book fits into the aperture and under the book is a map of the walk which relates to the concertina book. Opposite is a short piece of text about the book and the path.

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There is an extra element. If you lift the map there is a tiny nest with three eggs. It’s all about birds, hiding, the woods and the path to the bird hide by the lake. I was so pleased that it worked! It has made something special of the small book.

And then pigs.. you can never have too many pigs. We are slowly getting round to the packaging of the Salute the Pig prints and the book. There have to be stickers!

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More soon…..

Bird Hide

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Another small experimental book about the Spinney. This little book describes part of my route through the wood where the old oaks grow. Part way along the track are the remains of a fence, once for some limited purpose as there was only ever one strand of wire, now missing in parts. It’s another remnant of some other time, rather like the old oak trees.

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Initially I planned this as just a dense, tree filled, background with the fence, but as I worked on the block I thought it more apt to incorporate bird shapes “hidden” in the background. I am acutely aware that the wood is full of watchers, birds, squirrels and even perhaps the trees. You are never alone in a wood .. are you ? Also along the route there are signs to the Savages Spinney Bird Hide.

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First rough design based on my sketchbook drawing

Adding the reference to the nearby Bird Hide by the water seemed apt. Who is watching who I wonder?? So should anyone care to take time to look into the image, there are 16 birds worked into the background, some a little abstract but then how difficult is it sometimes to see the inhabitants in a wood?

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Two flying birds on the fold and the walking figure at the very end of the book.

The concertina form is joined by a thread of “wire” kept in place by two small twigs from the oak trees and is backed with linen, like the old maps which had that very satisfying strength and pliability. The covers are hard and quite weighty and the whole thing folds very nicely.. It is all hand printed so has a tactile surface so much more pleasing than the digital print.

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It’s a very satisfying thing to hold in your hand too, that is so important for a book.

It’s not often I am pleased, but, despite the many things that could be improved,  I like this little book very much.
It has taken a few weeks to work out and I have more prints to play with,  but at least one is actually finished.

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Hurrah!!  I am managing to stick, in part, to my 2017 resolution of finishing things!
More finished things soon.

Bird Week

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Birds are so much a part of my daily life, both in the garden and on walks or cycle rides and here, in the winter, we are lucky to have some extra bird visitors on the reservoir.
So on Saturday I went to look for the Great Northern Divers who have been around for a few weeks now and ..hurrahhh… I did get to see one and in close up too, thanks to a very kind man who set up a telescope for me. I watched it preen and rise up from the water spreading its wings, dive and reappear. It’s a beautiful thing.

As well as the diver there were tufted ducks, goldeneyes, pretty teal, many, many grebes with apparently the red necked grebe amongst them. Up in the woods I have recently watched the tiny gold crests, the buzzard, the spotty woodpeckers, and  bullfinches, as well as the usual crows, mallards, swans and coot, moorhens, fieldfares etc etc nearer the shoreline.
So this week I decided to make a record of some of them in some sketches, in between struggling with prints and books. They may find their way into prints etc.

Tufted Ducks  Aythya fuligula
First up is the tufted duck which I see every year in the winter.

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A small section of the large flotilla of Tufties on the reservoir, their crests being blown backwards into little points turning them into slightly punk-y ducks.They look like little toys, all facing the same way, their heads turned away from the strong head wind, which I was cycling into.

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Pencil sketching to get a sense of the shape

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Brush and watercolour only,  for a bit of discipline


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They have very bright yellow eyes and a beautifully curved smiling beak.


They are delightfully smart and very graphic. According to the RSPB some are resident but others are winter visitors from Iceland or Northern Europe.
See more on the RSPB site here