My next wood block carving project.

The top print is on paper – this is way round I want the final prints. The mdf block, that has been carved, is the reverse. Quite tricky. You have to remember that printing reverses everything.

Note all the blotchy areas where I haven’t removed enough wood. The printer has picked these up. I’ll have to carve deeper and remove them.

This new project is a drawing I did for a competition to re-illustrate a favourite children’s story – 17 Kings and 42 Elephants by Margaret Mahy. Unfortunately I missed the dead line for the competition!

However I loved reading the book when my children were small so I really enjoyed rethinking new images for a story I knew well. I particularly enjoyed drawing the elephants and crocodiles.

I will use the paper I printed

to colour in all the areas I want to keep. Then I will carve out the rest leaving the bits I want un-carved. I think there will be 3 other blocks. One for the far background, one for the elephants and one for all the forground foliage.

After all the separate blocks are printed

onto several sheets of paper I will tie all the images together with the first block giving the final definition with the “drawn” lines.

I am thinking of all the lovely colours I can make my elephants.

Grey to start, then maybe get a bit adventurous with pinks and blues and white.