Devil’s Fingers…and Bertie.

I am continuing my explorations of the fossils that can be found here at Grafham. So far I have found Gryphaea, Belemnites, bits of Ammonites but as yet no sections of Crinoid stems. They are a common find but I need to take some more time to look as they are tiny..but unexpectedly very beautiful. Some are simple and circular in sections and some are star shaped.

Photograph from the British Geological Survey website.

I have written a little more about these lovely fossils and the general folklore of fossils over on Pencilandleaf.

I shall be looking at Crinoids next week but meanwhile, after some explorations with the ammonite I turned to the Belemnites for some print inspiration.
I found a nice piece of a belemnite last week in my fossil hunting by the reservoir.

The belemnite is the large bullet shaped piece at the front. They were known as Devil’s Fingers or thought to be thunderbolts. They are the remains of these..

 
Image from this fascinating piece about Belemnites from Ferrebeekepeers

I had made three different possible background plates, fronds, wavy lines and a circle and then a 2 colour reduction lino plate.

 
Frond background and first printing.

 
Circle background, first lino print was rotated and reprinted. Then second colour added.

Chris said “What are you calling it?” “Bertie the Belemnite.” I said.

Oh dear, it just slipped out. I am supposed to be a serious artist but I guess it will stick, as these things have a tendency to do.
And one last print.

 
With wavy background and two colours. I will post more of the process  on Printdaily soon.

And to end, a glorious bunch of Berties on the Bench.

Well, its been that sort of day … more fossils when I return to Beautiful Beasts in a weeks time. Over to Sue…

Ammonite:The Snake Stone

Amongst my fossil finds on the reservoir shore this week was a fraction of an ammonite. Only a tiny piece but enough to justify an ammonite print.

I am rather fond of snakes so was dismayed to discover that ammonites were thought to be the remains of snakes, cursed and turned to stone by St Hilda. And then to add insult to injury they were subject to a beheading curse by St Cuthbert. All this to account for these curious curled and apparently headless things found in abundance near Whitby.

They are a beautiful shape. Maybe one day I will find a whole one!

The piece, the lino and design an a proof print.

The ammonite with overprinted fronds . Lino print 4 x 6 “

I was wondering about adding some type so tried this.

I may think about a series, I am not sure a fossil ABC is feasible but might be interesting.

Fossil progress.

I made a quick lino cut of the devil’s toenail and am playing with combining a gelatine print with the lino. The gelatine prints tend to be soft and can give a rather appropriate layered look. The lino on the other hand has sharp edges.

 

The lino print.

The gelatine print 4 x 4 inches

The layered print with an extra black added in Photoshop.
I have written about the gelatine process over at PrintDaily.

More fossils to come.

Small Beginnings: Devil’s Toenails

“Beginnings” are always exciting and surely nothing can be more exciting than the earliest forms of life. Fossils, I thought might be the perfect place to start my year of exploring the world of Beasts. This first week then will explore my local fossils.

I live by Grafham Reservoir whose shoreline is littered with shelly fossils. They are mostly Gryphaea remains, otherwise known, delightfully, as “devils toenails”.

This beautiful image is from the Natural History Museum’s page on the Gryphaea of Lyme Regis. The ones we see here are much more weathered and misshapen but there is still the magic feeling  of handling something so very ancient. They are from the early Jurassic period approx 199-189 million years ago. There must be millions of them here.

Most of the ones from the shore here look like this:

 
Devils Toenails from Grafham Reservoir shore Jan 2014

 

A typical piece of the “shingle”in today’s sun. It’s mostly made up of bits of graphaea from a bay on the reservoir that I, really creatively, call Devil’s Toe Nail Cove.

Devils Toenails 2012 Sketches from earlier P&L post, inspired by their odd shapes.

In life the Gryphaea were bivalves and relatives of our oysters.

From Bristol University’s site  Fossil Types

 GRYPHAEA (or Devil's Toenail): An extinct genus of bivalve. It is believed to have been an unattached recumbent recliner on the sea floor, with its very own self-righting mechanism if a strong current knocked it out of the sediment.

From the Natural History Museum’s Gryphaea page

“As a bivalve it possesses two valves. The valves are markedly unequal in size and shape, the left valve is strongly incurved, the right valve is small and flat. The left shell is thick and its surface is marked with numerous ridges.

They lived on the sea floor with the flat right valve facing up, it probably acted like a lid, when open allowing water carrying oxygen and nutrients to flow in and be filtered out of the water.”

Having read this, it now makes more sense of the shape.

Devil’s Toenails: Graphaea Fossils from Grafham Water

 Pencil on cartridge 8 x10”

I did find one today with a fraction of the “lid” intact. See the drawing top left. It explains some other odd shaped things I have found.

Devils Toenail?
The name does seem rather obvious when you see the gnarled and twisted shapes. Some may have thought they were the actual  toenails of demons. In that case there were legions of demons around Grafham, which could account for quite a bit.

More about these strange creatures, other local fossils and their inhabitants tomorrow.