Teesside industrial prints. Returning to the Black Path

Original sketch of a place somewhere near ‘The Black Path’ running through the steelworks near Middlesbrough

After what has seemed like an age repairing storm damaged fences, painting yards and yards of fencing and preparing to paint the end wall of the house I was idly rooting around in old boxes and portfolios when I discovered this sketch-come-painting that was done some time in the mid-sixties when I was at Art School, never throw anything away. It’s not a particularly great piece of work but the subject piqued my interest and like the pigeon lofts a month or more ago the image began to coalesce in my minds eye as a linocut. A little cropping, get the colours of the old semaphore railway signals correct, add some steelworkers or workmen on the bridge and someone walking their terrier and it all begins to make sense. Keep the colours simple utilising maybe a maximum of four printings, if I can limit myself, and I’m there. Simple. Let’s just see how the drawing up of the block, the cutting and the printing works out and I’ll follow the process on the blog over the next couple of weeks.