Should you wish to wish your beloved a Happy Valentine’s Day, or indeed just send them something to express the loveliness of love, you can use this picture. Just link back here or tag me @jsnowdendavies if you put it on Instagram or something so I know if anyone has actually used it (you may have to do the old right-click to load the images into a new tab if you get the “The image could not be loaded” error – that’s proving hard to track down and fix!).

If you are one of the 2.5 people per week who view this blog you might notice it looks similar to my Xmas card from last year, and you would be correct. At the end of a printing session there are always offcuts of painted papers laying about and the glass I roll the inks out on is always covered in a thin layer of the ink. One of the fun ways to finish off before all the cleaning commences is to put some paper, plain or painted, down onto the inky glass and draw on the back of it with a pencil or a biro to get a monoprint. You get a lovely fuzzy line and lots of random patches of ink, but nothing ever too brusque or smeary.

If you were to see the back of this print you’d see the pencil drawing that brought forth the image above. I flipped the image above in Irfanview as there was something about the arrow going the other way that I didn’t like. I can draw and write things mirror-image if I really put my mind to it and want to use a word and have the print read the right way of course.

I did another one of a snail but I’m not sure that’s the ideal thing to send your baby on Valentine’s Day.