Leporello book and Wood Engraving

I set myself a challenge a month ago: twelve drawings in twelve days. Thirty days later, I finished them. So what’s the big deal? Nothing except I haven’t drawn for drawing’s sake since teaching life drawing five years ago, and didn’t realise how satisfying the process of drawing from observation is. What to draw? Something local, easily accessible, that I see and pass through regularly, why not the side entrance leading to our back garden? And then include figures and animals to give a sense of scale. Limit the materials, A3 greyboard with pencils, pens, ink washes, and white acrylic paints. As the drawings multiplied in sequence, I joined them with gaffer tape to make one long storyboard without words.

Drawing 12 EC #1 42 × 29.7 cm Pen, ink, pencil and acrylic on greyboard. (Mark Jones 2025)

Concertina prototype book containing twelve digitally reduced prints of drawings of a house and garden. 10 × 7.5 cm (Mark Jones 2025)

Here is a miniature version of the twelve-drawing leporello book. The drawing features don’t always match up at the edges, but that just adds to the handmade quality. I attended a super wood engraving course taught by Robin Mackenzie https://www.robinmackenzie.co.uk/ recently at West Dean College and used one of these pages as inspiration for my wood engraving.

Drawing 12 EC #11 Pen, ink, pencil and acrylic paint on greyboard (Mark Jones 2025)

The drawing was reduced traced and carbon copied on to a block of 75 × 75 cm lemonwood. The red carbon line was picked out with a permanent fine marker pen and rolled with black oil based ink which was wiped back to expose the lines. The ink was applied to enable me to see where I have cut the wood.

Wood engraved lemonwood block ready to ink up.

Hand burnished wood engraving on Japanese Hosho paper 40gsm

Having decided on a colour scheme, the key block image was offset printed (transferred using tracing paper printing) onto two linoleum blocks (pink and blue). The linoleum blocks were cut and printed pink first and overlaid with blue to obtain tertiary colours, before the final black key block was printed on top.

12 EC #11 Wood engraving in three colours (black, pink and blue) on Hosho paper. 7.5 × 7.5 cm (Mark Jones 2025)

What’s next? Well, I am preparing for the next Winchester Print Fair by making new prints based on drawings of walking in Stoke Wood Park. The intention is to produce a suite of prints that can be combined in a leporello book.