These are some experiments in lumen printing, with the idea of creating a series of images of either birds or just general wildlife creatures, with the plants being contained within the silhouette of the creature. The plants are largely harvested from my garden or from the suburban footpaths around my house.

I’ve been partly inspired by The Lost Words – a book of spell poems by Robert Macfarlane and paintings by Jackie Morris, whose work I have fallen in love with – that was inspired by the removal of nature words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary.

I’d love to do some watercolour illustrations attempting a similar style, but first I wanted to think about what my unique interpretation might be of a similar subject matter, in terms of nature, magic, folklore and the disappearance of these things from our imagination. And these images are the start of that exploration.

Anyway, I feel it’s a pleasant enough subject, but very hard it seems to get right. The images are mainly direct scans of the prints. I have inverted one, and played around with some photoshop settings to give a few different options, just to get a feel of what might work best for a final image. There were some technical errors with the lumen process but, you know, still a work in progress.

Crow loud, Lord Crow,

Roar and row, Rasp and blow,

Over winds, Wracked and broken.

Wake! Wake! Lord Crow has spoken.