New Year wishes and a new bookplate

The last Moth Woman Press project for 2020 continues our current focus on bookplates.

Intended for the Australian Bookplate Design Award 2020, it was a pleasure to work on from start to finish. Our cat Alice, a delightful companion during this year’s lockdowns, was my model for the feline figure. She’s pictured below closely examining the newly carved lino block. After printing, the block was hand-coloured with watercolour (see final photo). Measurements are 15 x 12.5 cm (image) on A4 sized paper.

For more about this bookplate, including additional progress views, visit my art blog HERE.

Due to ongoing concerns about COVID-19, the Award has been postponed until 2021, although I’ve posted my entry ahead of time. 

Revised dates for the Australian Bookplate Design Award are still TBA. Meanwhile, warmest wishes to you all for a bright, happy, healthy and creative New Year. 

More bookplates

Lately I’ve been working on a linocut bookplate (not pictured) that I plan to enter into the upcoming Australian Bookplate Design Award. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for several years, but each time the biennial award comes around it seems to coincide with a particularly busy period and I’ve never quite been able to find the time. With the October deadline fast approaching, it’s not surprising that bookplates have been very much on my mind (see also last post). 

A recent post on my Art Blog, prompted by Mark Cousin’s remarkable 14-hour documentary, Women Make Film that was recently screened at the 2020 Melbourne International Film Festival, focuses on a suite of linocuts I made back in the 1990s that draw their inspiration from Film Noir and the genre known as the woman’s film.

As I developed my linocut, it seemed to me that the Film Noir/woman’s film images could also be reimagined as bookplates and I set about making a series of experiments on my iPad. All up, there are nine of them. They are still works in progress and haven’t yet been proofed. A small selection are reproduced here and the remaining designs will feature in a future post.