A print to echo the theme of growth
Lisa Andrews on creating the cover illustration for And So We Grow
Dark Angel Lisa Andrews created the beautiful cover illustration for And So We Grow, our latest volume of poetry. She kindly made time for a chat about her creative process, from sketching out ideas to inking, printing and, in this case, beyond, as the lino cut illustration took flight to the cover of the book.
When John Simmons approached you about illustrating the cover of And So We Grow, did he set you a specific brief?
John’s approach was very ‘John’: an invitation, ‘Would you like to…?’ rather than a formal brief. That said, the illustration needed to work around the coverlines, and we agreed it should echo the theme of growth, which runs through all the poems. That aside, I had complete freedom to create, which is an enormous privilege and slightly terrifying!
Once you found out about the project, did you have one clear idea from the start?
Ideas rarely come to me very quickly. In fact, I have learnt that it’s best not to try and think about a creative project directly for a few days (weeks, if I have the time) and let whatever magic lurks in the subconscious do its thing. That said, I knew I wanted to do something that held the three areas of type together, which meant I needed my print to do two things: span the length of the cover and fill the spaces around the type, without overwhelming it. A vine leaf was an obvious choice in terms of both function and theme. The subconscious magic bit was realising that I could make those leaves look like wings, creating a connection back to why the book exists in the first place – Dark Angels.
Did you read all the poems before starting the design process and are there any that, for you, have a particular link to the final illustration?
John shared the first section of plant poems with me, although I’d already had the pleasure of reading them because they all featured in 26 Plants – part of the 2023 Bloomsbury Festival (including my own poem about the wondrously named Devil’s-bit scabious). Re-reading them was an absolute pleasure but it was very much the theme of the book itself that led me to the final illustration.
Could you tell us a little bit about the step-by-step creative process from initial starting point to developing that into the final piece?
In terms of the process, I always start with sketches. I’m self-taught so I tend to err on the side of simplicity wherever possible, to avoid (my own) disappointment. In some cases, I may sketch lots of different versions. In this instance, I started drawing leaves on a vine which quickly morphed into the wings. From there it’s a question of tracing the drawing and transferring it onto the lino with pencil. Some people can draw backwards straight onto lino. I am not one of them! So, this process allows me to reverse the image on the lino so that the final print comes out the ‘right’ way round. Once the transfer is done, I will then spend some more time improving the outline or adjusting bits that don’t quite look right. It’s amazing how you see different things in an image when you reverse it. I like to create linoprints that have a hand-drawn quality to them, which is tricky when ultimately using a form that involves cutting lines, but taking the time to fine tune the drawing at this point helps with that.
Once the image is on the lino, I tend to just crack on with carving. That involves using a number of different cutting tools of different widths. They come in ‘v’ and ‘u’ shapes and some are good for straight lines, some better at curves. The smaller the width of the v or u, the more delicate the line, so I start with my smallest tool to carve the outline. This minimises the risk of messing up that initial shape, although there’s always the risk of going wrong! From there I use wider and wider tools to remove the areas of lino that I don’t want to be inked. The challenge is that you’re always having to think about the final outcome in negative – i.e. what isn’t carved will show up in ink.
The next step is inking up the lino plate – in this case black for my print although I knew the final book illustration would end up being silver on green (incidentally, I use a lot of silver and copper in my other prints). Inking up is as tricky as the carving – too much and those fine lines in the wings could easily be lost, not enough and you wouldn’t get the rich, dense colour within the wings themselves. So it involves adding ink to the plate layer by layer. I’ve learnt from reading books, watching online videos and having a couple of one-to-one lessons that it’s about listening to the sound of the ink when you’re rolling it out on the glass plate. It makes this lovely ‘shushing’ noise when it’s ready. One of the other challenges is that ink can end up on small, raised areas of carved lino – especially around the edges of your print. This ‘noise’ can be a really lovely effect when used on the right image, but for this I wanted something very crisp, so I also cut out an acetate ‘mask’, which I placed over the top of the lino once I’d inked it up. This makes sure that any little bits of stray ink get pressed onto the acetate rather than the paper.
The last step is the printing itself. I have an A3 desktop printing press that I use. Getting the pressure right is another art, and I will often rotate the plate 180 degrees during the process to make sure I’ve applied that pressure evenly. Typically, I will do a handful of test runs on cheaper paper first to make sure I’m happy with the way the carving is coming out and then switch to nicer paper. At which point, I’ll just keep going until I get the right amount of ink on the paper to create a dense image without losing the finer details.
When you discovered lino printing, what was it about it that appealed to you?
I came to linoprinting completely by accident. I’ve discovered in the last few years that I love tactile art – ceramics, sculpture, oil paintings (to look at, I’m no painter!), and I love the process of using my hands to make things. My grandad and Dad were/are both excellent carpenters. Before the pandemic, I attended pottery classes, but that all came to a stop in lockdown. At which point I started drawing for the first time since I was a child. I did some online classes where we tried out charcoal and watercolours, which was fun, but I wasn’t particularly enjoying the process or any of the results. I then stumbled across an art subscription company via Instagram, which sent out a box of materials once a quarter to help people discover different types of art. Linocut was the second box and I was immediately hooked. It gave me the same tactile sensation that I was getting from pottery but all from the convenience of being able to do it from my dining room table (my husband and I had discussed the merits and drawbacks of trying to install a pottery wheel in our tiny patio garden!). And like pottery, I loved the sense of danger that is present at every stage of the process – I might not be able to get the drawing out of my head, my hand might slip and ruin the carving, I might get too much/too little ink on the plate and have to redo the print. I don’t know what that says about me, but there’s a balance between the risk involved and the reward when you get it right that makes me incredibly happy!
Do you think that the work you do with your lino printing plays into how you approach writing, does it make you think differently about it?
What’s been so interesting is that I came to drawing and linoprinting with very low expectations, which has given me the freedom to try things, inevitably fail, but then try them again and improve. Words have been such a big part of my life for such a long time that I don’t feel that same sense of freedom in my creative writing. I expect it to be ‘right’ first time, and still get cross with myself when it’s not as good as I had imagined. This is despite knowing – and telling other writers – that it is a process, just like any other artform, and that the hard work/reward is in learning from the mistakes, redrafting and polishing. So, I don’t know that it has changed the way I think about my writing specifically, but it has encouraged me to be a little kinder to myself. I’m also starting to think more about how I might combine words and printmaking, something I loved doing for another 26 Bloomsbury project a couple of years ago, where I created a print inspired by insects and a poem nestled within the image.
To follow Lisa’s printmaking, you can find her at @dragonflyprintmaker on Instagram.
To purchase a copy of And So We Grow, pop over to our publishing partner at Paekakariki Press.