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I bought this large card (or small poster) featuring a black cat at Gallery Koppelo. The exhibition showcased Tuuni Turula’s charming cat paintings, with cat-themed graphic art displayed upstairs. This black cat is strutting along—perhaps on a sloping surface—and casting a red shadow. The cat is staring with narrowed eyes; it’s best not to get too close.
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I am starting a new, fairly large (50 x 60 cm) mixed-media piece. The view of Pispala forming the base has already been printed from two linocuts, and a linocut of an orange moon—with a touch of the darkness of night on one side—has been added to the sky. Yet, in my mind, the sky is already red pastel.
Linopiirros blobkalasta on nyt vihreä. Mietin vaan, miten vihreä kala sopii siniseen veteen, mutta ainahan kalan voi vedostaa mustanakin. Aika vihainen kala tämä on ja isokin: 15 x 25 cm. Hyvin voisi sopia kahdestaankin lyhtykalan kalan samalle paperille. Taustan se vain vaatii.
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The linocut of the blobfish is now green. I’m just wondering how a green fish will look against blue water, though the print can always printed in black instead. It’s quite an angry-looking fish, and a large one too: 15 x 25 cm. It would actually work well paired with an anglerfish on the same sheet of paper. It just needs a background.
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The title of Michael Weigall’s photo collage is *Cairo Cat*. The black-and-white cat is wearing an Arab headscarf, with the pyramids rising in the misty background. There is a mystical quality to the cat’s eyes, and its expression suggests it is a ruler of some kind.
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The linocut of the Pispala log-floating tunnel seems to be finished now. I colored the light streaming from the tunnel entrance yellow. At the top of the Pispala ridge stands Suur-Voima, the only apartment building. The other houses are small wooden ones, each unique. It is particularly enjoyable to carve the details of the roofs, windows, and wall cladding. Carving that little playground was fun, too. I plan to extend the image to the left with another linocut featuring a fairly large house by the shore. The size of this picture is 30 x 40 cm.
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The linocut of the Pispala log-floating tunnel is finished, though it still needs a little fine-tuning. I plan to color the light streaming through the tunnel yellow. I ran into some issues with carving and printing the sky. In this latest print, only a small amount of "noice"—or clouds—is visible in the sky. I tried various approaches. At first, I carved a few clouds into the sky, but they looked far too dark. Then I carved the clouds to be light, but the result was poor. In one experiment, I carved away a lot of sky but there still were too much "noice, so I wiped away the "noice" from the sky with a damp cloth, but the sky looked bad then, too—it was completely blank. I settled on this version, where I carved the sky to be quite "empty," though not entirely white.
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Oh look, a bud on Cobeana Scandensd vine—which has been sitting under the table at the cottage for ages—has opened. The blossoms look really funny when thay have blossomed, too. And over the course of the summer, the vine has turned the balcony into a cave.
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In the watercolor painting, a cat sees its reflection and gets startled. The fur on its back stands on end. The artist is Sarah Maycock, and the back of the card features William Wordsworth’s poem "The Kitten Playing":
"See the kitten, how she starts,
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More houses have now been added to the ridge in the linocut of the Pispala log-floating tunnel. The Ylä-Voima apartment building is still visible at the highest point. The other houses are small wooden ones typical of Pispala; some have only had their outlines carved so far. The block measures 30 x 40 cm, so carving such detailed houses was a slow process. Fortunately, the weather was good, and the carving could be done on the summer cottage balcony.
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There are old elms on the shore near the Pispala log-floating tunnel, and one of them found its way into my linocut. The tree appears black in the linoleum block because I colored it with a felt-tip pen. Sometimes, coloring with a pen helps—for instance, when carving thin branches—as it makes the uncarved areas stand out more clearly from the carved ones.
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Stairs have now appeared in the linocut of the Pispala log-floating tunnel. They lead from near the shore to the Ylä-Voima building at the highest point of the Pispala ridge. A few houses have already been carved onto the lakeshore, but the smaller houses on the ridge are missing. It looks as though there is a stairway to heaven.
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During the summer at the cottage, I started working on a new linocut featuring Pispala. The subject is a familiar sight from my walks: the old Pispala log-floating tunnel. I had often wondered about that strange opening on the Pispala hillside. I read a bit about its history online: the tunnel was built between 1966 and 1968 to float bundles of logs from Lake Näsijärvi to Lake Pyhäjärvi. However, it was never used and remained idle for 40 years. In 2013, the tunnel was finally opened, serving as a shortcut for pedestrians beneath the ridge and a transport route for moving boats between the lakes. It was a momentous occasion when one could finally walk through the tunnel. Well, now the tunnel is closed again. This linocut depicts the log-floating tunnel—with an opening I plan to color yellow—along with a stretch of the Pyhäjärvi shoreline, the highest house on the ridge, and the metal transport platform designed for the tunnel, which still stands on the shore.
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The sun is out again, and my Cobeana Scandens has enthusiastically started opening its flowers—pale yellow at first, gradually turning violet. There is still time to bloom!
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Frederick Hunter (1858–1943) created this charming mezzotint based on a painting by Henrietta Ronner. In the 19th century, Ronner frequently painted heartwarming scenes—usually featuring a family of cats—in which a mother cat watches over her kittens at play amidst textiles, furniture, and often musical instruments. In this print, three kittens are playing hide-and-seek; a white kitten is perhaps hiding inside a fur boa or a large hat, while the others try to catch it. Beautiful, soft textiles and a Japanese fan appear in this image as well, though the mother cat is nowhere to be seen.
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The calendar for 2026 of my linocuts and pastels has been printed in the traditional style again. The pictures are my linocuts and pastels. Timo has chosen Finnish proverbs to accompany the pictures. A-Print/ Printtaamo has made a good print.
The images feature plenty of Pispala, birds, fish, water, and sky. The month of January shows the rooftops of London. The calendar measures 42 x 21 cm.
You can order the calendar, but only to Finland via my Etsy shop (linokissa) for 24 euros. Due to its large size, it is shipped as an S-sized parcel (not as a letter).
