Liz Saunders Art

Warm Wishes - there are 7 prints remaining of this limited edition of 14 prints. Details are on my website. https://www.lizsaunders.ca/prints

Happy Valentine's Day! Black-capped Chickadees are such "romantic" and optimistic little birds. They are early nesters and on bright, bitterly cold, days in January and February they are one of the few birds singing their spring songs well before our weather is anything near spring-like. I carved this lino print in 2018, when I was still figuring things out and didn't have good carving tools (or very good carving skills for that matter). It's definitely not one of my best prints, but I like the composition and the cheeriness of it, so I printed a few in oil-based inks the other day and added watercolour.

UPDATE - all eight prints have sold. Wow - thank-you so much! I will contact everyone once I'm back from our afternoon dog walk. I have eight "On the Move" prints for sale. Each one is unique because of the hand-colouring. If you would like to purchase one, please put your name in the comments (under the photo of the one that you want) and I will contact you to arrange payment. Prices vary slightly and are shown with each individual print. Here are the details:... Hand-coloured lino print (open edition). Printed with oil-based black ink and painted with Daniel Smith professional watercolours. Printed on Fabriano 300lb hot press watercolour paper. Made in Italy, Fabriano paper is 100% cotton and acid free. Print size is approximately 7" x 6" and fits beautifully in a 5 x 7 mat. I have left the extra inch to allow for other framing options. Watermark is visible on the paper because I have used off-cuts from my bluebird prints to create these (I hate wasting good paper!). But if you use a 5 x 7 mat, the watermark should not appear. While watercolours are traditionally framed with a white mat, a black mat emphasizes the ink in a lino print nicely!

After two afternoons of printing, every surface is covered with prints :-) Now to wait a week for them all to dry....

I had an inky kind of day today. It was such a joy work with oil-based ink and good quality paper after all of the issues I had with my Christmas cards (which left me worried that I had completely lost my print-making mojo!).

"Under the Arch" A sketch from memory from a walk through our cottonwood forest a couple of weeks ago. I will try to explain this for my non-Albertan followers.... When we have a Chinook (warm west wind), there is usually a giant arch in the sky. Most of the sky is covered with cloud except for what is visible under the arch to the west. When the ground is snow-covered, the overcast light makes everything look monochrome - blacks, greys and whites. But we still get a dazzling glimpse of blue sky under the arch. That is what I was trying to capture here - using only black and grey except for the explosion of blue under the Chinook arch.

I've been experimenting with winter colours and re-doing one of my summer landscapes in winter tones. The sunsets and sunrises have been incredible lately, although I do wonder if any one other than my neighbours will believe me that the skies are truly these colours on some mornings!