NARRATIVE ARK

NEIL STEWART

LINO PRINTS

WOOD CARVING

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Tweed Valley Bikes

My Blog ! Forest Loper

Sound diaries

The Big Print !

6 Faroese boatmen

Finding Ra

KVF Radio interview

FINDRA

Søldarfjørður

Eagle Hunter. Preliminary sketches

Bringsnagøta , Torshavn

Sculpture progress

Shop addition. New Year`s Day, St Ives

Koltur. Faroe Islands

Myndlist

Delivering prints

The Grey Castle

Leading a print workshop

Framed prints

Cutting mounts

A pub in Clifton, County Galway

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Eastgate Film

St Ronan`s primary.

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An iconic viewpoint, this must have drawn people for many centuries. Generation upon generation.
The arc of the river. The Eildon Hills. The sense of space and time standing still.
The view is a comforting mix of transience: cultivation, farm fields and forest, and of permanence: timeless river, hills and cloudscape.
I went there and hadn`t realised how significant it is to folk. As I walked down from the car park, through the gorse, I came upon countless dried flower bunches, ribbons, messages.
There`s a numinous feel to the place.
Trees: practically speaking I`ve either scratch-drawn the lines of a tree into the lino (producing white line on a black background) or cut away and around the drawn tree shape (black image on a white back ground)
There are types of tree based on actual species (observed and photographed): birch, larch, spruce, oak, sycamore, and you develop a shorthand for each. With variations.
Cutting into lino is like drawing with your other hand; no easy, familiar, habitual flow. No “lazy” lines and shapes. The medium and tools make us draw like a 5 year old child.
And because we are largely working “in the dark”, on a reverse image, with little sense of how strongly the white and black areas are going to get on, the final printed image always feels bolder than a drawing, and more radical.

Coffee ...

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Dunnydeer

Carrifran. 6 Pieces

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Sketch for Scott`s View

Forest Loper Blog

Cornish New Year

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At the turn of the century we moved down to Innerleithen from Edinburgh and found it to be a great place to grow kids. Through their school and through becoming Sash Girls and Monks, we came to know Games Week.
We`d had significant flooding the previous winter, in 2015. I`ve never seen the river like this.
The bands marching down the High Street has some of the sense of a strong flow of water bursting the banks of its river.
I puzzled for ages how to fit everything in to the image. Factual details, memories and imaginings. Like the day paragliders flew down to the school playground, the inclusion of “Rocky” (Innerleithen landmark), Fikos the pizza place, the old Belisha Beacons, distinctive buildings and of course the bunting, the crowds and the two bands.
And how better to create a sense that we are participating in the occasion, than to float 10 feet above ground level for the best view !
Google Street Map was a great discovery for picking out detail. I hovered many times up and down the High Street in that other virtual world.
Also perspective: applying the general rule about vanishing points. There was so much razzmatazz and excitement going on in the image that I wanted to be sure a scaffolding was safely underpinning it all; a secure, carefully planned composition. Then I could “relax within a system”, let the imagination run away with itself in the carving process.
Strangely, as I worked on this piece, I listened to a recording of the Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” radio play. This maybe added a slightly skittish quality to the print.

Heuston Station. Dublin

Thornielee from Elibank Craig

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Preliminary drawing. Beating the Retreat

St Ronan`s Wells

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Walkerburn summer festival

Recreational tree climbing at Vogrie

Design: Neil Stewart 2017