Channelling Gillian Ayres

Seeing Gillian Ayres' prints show at Alan Cristea (till 11 May, online here), with the bright clear colours,  provided a welcome contrast to the dull brown woodcut printing that morning. A couple of details -

Having made lithography and screenprints, she mor recently made monoprints and walnut veneered woodblocks - fitting up to 20 or so colours on two blocks, which were often cut into shapes to fit together like a jigsaw -

I revelled in the colours and shapes, and thought back to using a magazine cut-out of one of her prints for choosing the next colour in "the stripey painting".

This one in a book really grabbed me, and I speculated about how to do something similar in woodcut; after all, I have some bits of wood just the right shape -

So at home I drew and painted a version from memory -

 and doodled a bit, finding other possible colourways -

then looked carefully at the photo and came up with another version, which had to fit onto the width of my paper -

The blue background is the wrong shade - I wanted the colour provided by the crayon and in the bottom right -

It's been tweaked a bit, and white paint added ... still not right; compare with the original and you'll think "all wrong" - !

Gillian Ayres, Mazy Sands all Water-Wattled (2014)

... alas for my kak-handed adaptations, misperceptions, and lack of colour and tonal balance, not to mention the glaring compositional clunkers.

Copying is (a) not easy and (b) very instructive! Also, it should not be rushed.