Glimpses in Time by Hamilton High School

“My life is my inspiration”

A HUGE thank you to Hamilton High School art teacher Daniele Vickers and her filmmaking class for creating short documentaries of local artists. I was one of those lucky few! Her class made a harrowing trek up my road to do the filming. The whole process was interesting and an amazing amount of preparation and background work went into making this movie. The students did a fantastic job preparing interview questions, setting up and running the equipment. They presented themselves professionally and edited quite of lot of film into this well produced documentary. 

Over the years Laughing Mule Press has grown significantly but the heart and soul of the company remains the same. I talk about some of the animals that have inspired my pieces and the process behind making the prints. The first step is getting inspiration from animals (either friends or my own) so I can share a glimpse of their personality in each piece. Then, I start sketching a series of images in my sketchpad and eventually onto my iPad. This is printed and traced onto linoleum. The carving is a slow, methodical process that takes 3-4 days to complete. Ink is rolled onto the print, paper is pressed by hand, and carefully peeled off - resulting in a beautiful, unique print! There are approximately 30-40 original prints made of each design to keep them in an affordable price range. We can also make you a custom frame from wood that we log with my mules and mill down on our portable sawmill into frame profiles.

More than anything Laughing Mule Press strives to bring people together, put a smile on everyone’s face and share some positivity in this big, messy thing we call life!  

Thank you to Hamilton High School and specifically: 

Director: Jay James 

Editors: Grace Keele, August Hughes, 

Camera Operators: Jay  James,  August Hughes, Dom Smith, Jaylyne Solis, Katy Laird Hollister, Matthew Clifton 

Sound: Aidan Clark, Jaylene Solis, Alexis Kaul

Interviewer: Katy Laird Hollister

Teacher: Daniele Vickers

The Majestic Sheep Print

I finished up the sheep print a while back, but I wanted to include some extra information about it here. I normally pretty much stick to canine and equine subject matter, but I wanted to do a print that I could play around with another type of texture (wool vs hair) and some ideas for backgrounds to add some dimension to my prints instead of just strictly portraits.

I love how the wool turned out especially on his chest. I drew quite a few versions before I decided to just sketch him directly on the lino and let the carving bring out the texture of the wool instead of trying to draw it all out. I really like the tall blades of grass blowing in the wind too. The rest of the grass looks nice printed but is pretty similar to fur in a lot of ways. I wanted to try to capture the look of the field blowing and swaying in the wind.

This is the first print I used an oil based ink. I wanted to try Caligo Safe Wash Inks because I have heard so many great comments about them. They are a soy based ink that washes up with soap and water. It was much easier to print the solid areas than with the water based ink I have been using, and I needed a much lighter application of ink too. They definitely stay useable longer so I didn't have to rush as much while printing. They do clean up well, but not quite as easily as the water based inks. Since I don't have a press and print everything by hand they are perfect for prints with large dark areas. I will definately keep using both types of ink depending on the project.

It all worked out well because Chester (the sheep model) belongs to a friend of mine and she wanted a print of him, plus farm animals are cool too. She always calls him the majestic sheep because of how he often stands looking off into the distance with his head held high and attentive. But then the second he sees someone he comes running over to get ear scratches and ruins the whole majestic thing by being a snuggle bunny.