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There's a heron block on the bench since last week and I'm after getting to the bit nobody warns you about, which is the part where the legs meet the body. Sounds simple. It is not. Get it wrong and you've got a bird standing in a bucket. Anyroad, I carved it, pulled a proof, and the whole thing reads like a heron in wellingtons for the winter. The shoulders are too heavy where I tried to be clever with the shading and now he looks like he's been at the spuds all his life. The thing is, I know what's wrong and I know roughly how to fix it, and I still sat looking at it for two hours with a mug of tea gone cold instead of just doing it. Eventually the small lad came in looking for his crayons, saw it, and said "he's fierce fat isn't he." Out of the mouths. He's not wrong either. So it's back to the block tomorrow, take the shoulders down and stop being precious about it. That's the whole job really, being willing to cut away the bit you were pleased with. Put it up on the wall for the night so I don't have to look at him anymore. The dog's not a bit impressed either.

Doing a big one, A2, a heron standing in the reeds at Ros an Mhíl with the tide half out. Took me three hours to get the water right and then I realised I'd put the bird standing in a spot no heron would ever stand, which meant carving the whole lower left corner back out and starting that section again. Course I only copped it after inking up. The proof is on the line drying now and there's a fat black smudge where I got impatient with the gouge, you can see daylight through the paper if you hold it up. Anyway. It's the third heron this year. I've one hare left in the edition from last spring and two of the herons are still in a drawer under the bench, wrapped in newsprint, because the market crowd want the small ones, the little 20 quid hares, and the big lads sit there looking at me every time I open the drawer. But I keep carving them. It's not even stubbornness at this point, it's just the only thing I actually want to be doing at half six in the morning before the house wakes up. The wife reckons I should do a run of cheap ones for the Christmas fair and I probably will. But I'm not doing it today.

Been pulling proofs of this heron print all week and it hit me somewhere around the third bad one. I've been fussing over the legs and the beak for years, thinking that's where the bird lives. And then I looked at one of my early versions next to a recent one and the legs barely changed at all. What changed was the neck. That little kink where it doubles back on itself before it strikes. That's the whole bird. Get that wrong and you've got a stork with notions. Get it right and you can botch the feet entirely and nobody cares. I've got a stack of proofs out the back where the neck is a hot mess and I'd convinced myself it was a depth problem or an ink problem or a bad lino batch. It was none of the above. I was just over here polishing the wrong corner of the thing. Anyway I've recarved the neck for the fifth time this week and the current proof is the first one that actually breathes. Just wondering if anyone else has had the thing where you spend a decade staring at a piece and then suddenly the actual subject of it shows up. Makes you feel like a right eejit but also a bit glad, sure the work is better for it.

So there's this heron I've been working on for about three weeks. Big fella, landing pose, wings up, the whole bit. Carved the whole thing. Proofed it. And it was just... dead. Technically fine, lines were clean, composition held up, but there was nothing in it. No weight to the landing, no sense of the bird actually coming down onto something. Just a heron-shaped object hovering in space. Stuck it in a drawer. Left it there a full week. Every time I opened the drawer I'd see it and feel a bit sick. Last night I got the block back out, printed it dark to see what I had, and went at it again with the gouges. Cut the whole background away differently. Dropped the waterline lower. Gave the legs some actual bend, some tension. It's a completely different print now, same heron, same block, but there's air around him and he's actually landing somewhere. I don't know why it took me a week to admit the first pass was banjaxed. Pride maybe. Or just not wanting to face another three evenings of carving. But the block didn't punish me for it. That's the mad thing, lino doesn't hold a grudge. You can keep cutting into it till you get it right or till there's nothing left. Anyone else ever finished something, knew it was wrong, and just sat on it for ages before fixing it?

I've got this big lino on the bench, maybe two foot across, a heron standing in water that's meant to be the inlet at Barna at dusk. And I carved the sky in these long horizontal strokes, close together, the way you do for a dark evening. Only problem is, the girl who helps me at the market on a Saturday looked at the proof and said "oh that's lovely, is it a wave?" And now I can't unsee it. The sky reads as water. The water reads as water. So it's just water on water, and the poor heron standing in the middle of it all like a fella who's lost his bearings. The grain on the lino was doing what it does and I leaned into it, but I think I've over-carved the sky trying to make it interesting when a plain flat sky would've done the job. Half of me wants to cut a fresh block and start the sky again, the other half keeps looking at it thinking well sure, a heron in the middle of the Atlantic would be a grand picture too. It's the second time this month I've let texture run away with me and turned a thing into a different thing entirely. Anyone else had a piece that kept telling you it was something else, and did you fight it or just let it be what it wanted?

Right, so I'm two weeks into a block of a heron standing in the shallows, all that hatchwork around the water done, maybe three hours from being ready to proof, and the lino tears. Clean down the middle, right through the bird's chest. Not a crack or a chip. A catastrophic divorce. I stood there holding the two halves for a good minute. Then I laughed, because what else are you going to do. The dog looked up at me to see if I was alright and decided I wasn't worth the effort, went back to sleep. Two weeks. And the stuff I was using was perfectly good lino too, not cheap grey stuff, it just decided it was done with me. The funny thing is, I kept both halves. I'm fairly sure there's a way to mount them and pull them as two pieces, but honestly I might just frame the block itself the way it broke, it's sort of brutal and lovely. Or use the heron's head half for a smaller print. Give it a chance to redeem itself. Anyway. If anyone's got a method for rescuing a torn block, I'm all ears, but I'll warn you I've already talked myself into it being art. The missus says I'm a hoarder with a printing press. She's not wrong.

So the small cheap brayer I'd been using for years finally gave up, the roller went egg-shaped on me around last Tuesday, and I went in to the art shop in town half intending to buy another cheap one and came out with a proper hard rubber one for a tenner. I know. Wild spending. But here's the thing, I've been printing the same block of a heron for about three weeks now trying to get an edition of twelve out of it, and I was blaming the lino, blaming the ink, blaming the damp weather in the shed, and it turns out the whole time it was the brayer. The cheap one was pressing uneven, so the middle of the block was picking up ink lovely and the edges were starving. Twelve prints in and the last six look like a different block entirely. So many years at this and I still spend a fortnight giving out about the wrong yoke. The block was grand. I was the problem. Trimmed the first six in half for test prints, which killed me slightly, but they're in the bin now and I've moved on with my life. Anyway, the heron's nearly there. Much darker at the edges now, properly moody, which is what I wanted all along.

Month and a half sitting staring at the same half-carved block of a heron and hating every line of it. Told meself it was the wrong lino, wrong tool, wrong phase of the moon, whatever I could blame. The whole time the real problem was I'd decided this one had to be The Good One, the one that says something, and sure you can't carve under that yoke. No wonder the blade kept slipping. Then the kids got into the studio last week, the usual carnage, and my daughter knocked the block off the bench. Landed lino-side down on the concrete, gouged the corner of it. Would've wept a month ago. Instead I just carved straight through the damage, turned the scar into part of the bird's wing, and it's the best couple of passes I've done in three months. Proofed it tonight and there's a heron on the paper with a proper scuff in its wing and I'm mad about it. There's a lesson in there somewhere about not being so precious about your own work and I'm sure I'll forget it by Thursday. But tonight I'm chuffed. That's the win. And for the record the lino was grand. It was never the lino.

Did a linocut for a mate's mother two years back. She wanted a heron for the sitting room, lovely woman, made us dinner while the ink dried. Charged her €80 because sure, she's family-adjacent, and it was only one colour, how long could it take. Twelve hours it took. Twelve. And between the lino, the paper, the good ink, the proofing runs where the bugger wouldn't sit flat... I made about €4.50 an hour and told myself it was the gesture that mattered. Now every second cousin and neighbour's dog is looking for the "€80 heron." Two women this month alone, and one of them was genuinely offended when I said €180 for a bigger one. "But you did Joan's for eighty." Joan knows the price of bread, so she does, and she's mortified, but the cat's out of the bag. Worst part is I can't even be mad at them. I set the damn rate. If you undervalue your own work once, that's the price that follows you around for the next five years. I've had to have the awkward chat three times now and I still hate it every go. Lesson's learned anyway. Friend rate is a bottle of whiskey and a proper thank you, not a discount that pads itself into every conversation after. Sure I'm still not sure how to undo it, but I'm not doing another one at eighty. That ship has sailed.

Right so, small confession. Years ago I stopped trying to carve cold lino. You'd be fighting the stuff, the tool skidding, the surface like a frozen jaffa, and you'd blame your hands when really the block was just stone cold. So now the kettle goes on the minute I get in. Not for tea, not at first anyway. I sit the block on an old tea towel beside it, let it take the warmth for ten minutes while I have the actual tea and stare at the drawing and convince myself I know what I'm doing. Means the studio smells faintly of burnt dust and hot rubber now. Which is a smell I've come to love and absolutely nobody else would. The wife came in last week to call me for dinner, saw the block propped up on the towel like a patient in a hospital bed, and just looked at me. "It's not even a real setting, Niall." It is though. It's the setting between boil and off. That's a setting. Anyway I'm midway through a big heron piece, 40cm by 60cm, three blocks for it, and the grey block is the one giving me trouble. Grey always takes the warmth worse than the brown. I'm aware how mental that sentence would sound to anyone outside this room. What's the mad ritual you'd have to explain with a straight face? I'll read them all tonight before I go back to the heron.

Bit of a mad one Saturday. I do the market in Galway most weeks, stall of prints, hares and herons and the odd bit of bog. Usually I'm lucky to shift four or five and I'm grand with that, it's more about the chat than the till. Anyway a woman came back for the third time in about an hour. Kept circling the big one, the heron in the reeds, the one that took me three blocks to get right because the legs kept coming out like stilts on a stork. Third visit she just says she'll take it. Framed, cash, no haggling, and I wrapped it in the good paper I keep for that and off she went under her arm in the rain. Here's the thing though. I went to take it off the wall and there was this clean pale rectangle where it had been hanging, and I got a bit of a pang off it. All winter looking at that thing every Saturday and now there's just a bare patch of hessian. Got home and the small fella asked had I sold "the bird" and when I said yes he goes "so you don't have it anymore" and looked at me like I'd lost something. Which I suppose I did. The whole point is to sell them, that's the job, ink and paper and a few pound for the coal. But there's a difference between knowing a print is out in the world somewhere and standing in front of the empty nail it used to be on. Anyway the woman was delighted, she said her mother had one of my hares years ago at a fair in Spiddal, so it's gone to a good home. Still. Weird aul feeling all the same.

Look, I know what the problem is and I'm going to say it out loud so I stop being thick about it. I'm on a heron, standing in the shallows, and the whole thing hangs on the neck. That S-curve is the print. Everything else is furniture. And I've cut the neck about 2mm too thick at the shoulder join, so instead of that coiled tension it looks like a goose that's had a feed of pints. I've proofed it four times now on the same sheet of Japanese paper, telling myself each time it's just the inking, the pressure, the paper's a bit damp, I'll pull it again when I'm fresh. It's not the inking. The block is wrong. The annoying bit is the fix means cutting a new keyblock from scratch. There's no adding wood back. I could scrape a sliver off the shoulder line and see if I can slim it down, but then the wing feathering above it has nothing to sit into and it'll look like a heron wearing a scarf. So it's start again, and I've two weeks to the market in Spiddal. Any of ye ever try cutting the thing you're avoiding on a scrap block first, just to prove to yourself it's the right cut? I've a mind to do it but I suspect I'm only delaying the inevitable and I know it.

Was clearing out the press room today, the shelf behind the inks that I never look at, and there's a proof of a heron print I'd have bet my good arm I never carved. But there it is. Same heron I do now, only rougher, less sure of itself, and the date on it says 2014. I don't remember making it at all. Not a bit. It's a strange thing, coming across your own work like it's somebody else's. I studied it the way you'd look at a stranger's print in a gallery. And I was a bit jealous of the fella who made it, do you know? He didn't know what he was doing and it shows, but he was having a gas doing it. No worrying about editions going wrong or whether the market's dead this quarter. Just carving. Anyway I have it pinned up over the bench now. Might keep it as a kick up the arse. Ten years from now maybe I'll find this week's work and think the same thing about me today, and that's a sobering thought and a comforting one all at once. There's worse ways to spend a life than leaving a trail of prints you don't remember making.

Ach, I'm still buzzing off this. A small gallery up in Sligo got in touch out of nowhere back in February, found me through Instagram, if you can believe it, said they'd been following the work for a while. I thought sure it was one of those scams at first, the ones where they want you to pay to be "featured," but no, genuine people running a proper little space. Sent them a dozen prints this morning, all matted and packed proper. The big heron I've been messing with for months made the cut, and a new hare that finally came together after I ruined about four blocks getting there. Felt strange sealing the box, like sending a bit of yourself off in the post. But good strange. Never had a gallery come to me before. Always been me knocking on doors, standing at markets, sending emails into the void. Nice to be on the other end of it for once. Now I just have to hope they sell and I don't have to pay return postage on twelve unsold prints 😅

So the hare block I'd been chipping at since Tuesday, grand, three proofs off it, fourth one and I'm pulling it and there's a great big gouge straight through the near ear. Went at it with the 3mm when I should have had the 1mm in. Sure look. It's a week's work gone in a second. And here's the thing that has me slightly worried about myself. I wasn't even annoyed. Stood there looking at it like a fella watching rain. Twenty years of this and I'd normally be kicked around the workshop for an hour, dog hiding under the bench. There's a bit of me that thinks a ruined block is nearly a relief. It's decided for you. You can stop carrying it around in the head, all the small things you were going to fix on the next version, the shoulder that wasn't right, the line under the belly I knew was too fussy. Gone. No more versions. So I've one block left in the drawer that's big enough for a hare. And I'm not carving the same one. Going at the whole thing different, more black, less messing about with the hatching. Might be rubbish. Might be the best thing I've done since the heron. Anyway there's a gouge mark about three inches long living in my head now and I'd say it'll be in the next print somewhere whether I like it or not.

So I'll tell you what happened and you can decide if I'm codding myself. Start of the summer I got sick of the whole rigmarole. The Facebook page was at me every day, "boost this", "your reach is down", and I was spending a solid hour a night liking other people's posts so they'd like mine back. Feels like being back at school doing favours for lads who'd still not sit beside you at lunch. So I just stopped. Six weeks. Didn't delete it, just left it there like a shed you don't open. Two things came out of it. First, nothing happened. No cliff, no fall off a ledge, the exact same trickle of sales as before. Which tells me the hour a night was doing absolutely nothing except making me feel busy. Second, and this is the bit I can't fully explain. I stuck a wee sign on the table at the Saturday market in Galway. Just a laminated card, "if you'd like to hear when there's a new print, write your email here". Real pen, real paper, and I stand there like an eejit with a clipboard. Went from 61 names to 128 over the six weeks. I think people are just tired. They'll give you their email when you ask them face to face and there's a crayon involved for the small one, but they won't click a link you put under a photo of a heron. I've gone back on the page now, but it's down to one post a week and I don't read the comments on the boosted ones anymore because there's no speaking to them. Anyone else find the thing you were most afraid to stop doing was the thing doing the least?

I'll go first and it's a small one but it's lived in my head for years. Walked into a place in town years ago with a folder of prints under my arm, two hares and a heron, the whole menagerie. Woman behind the desk looked at maybe the top print for four seconds, didn't lift it, and says "we're actually fully booked with printmakers for the next two years." Fully booked. Two years. For printmakers specifically. I was green enough to nearly believe her. Walked back out onto the street and it hit me about fifty yards down that she'd never once looked at the work at all, she'd just wanted me gone and that was the tidiest sentence she had to hand. Only other one that comes close is the "we'd love to keep you on file" from a fella whose "file" I'd say was the bin. So that's mine. What's the first thing a gallery ever said to you that you knew, even in the moment, was pure wind? The "we'll be in touch," the "it's not quite right for our space," the "we only show artists with representation" said by a gallery that shows nobody with representation. Give me the line and where you were standing when you heard it, that's the good bit.

Had a market stall at the weekend and the crowd-pleaser wasn't the big linen-backed heron print I was proud of. It was the small rough one of the drowned village, the one I carved off an old photo of my granda's aunt's house that's under the water now in Connemara. Three people bought it and every single one of them stood there while I told them the story. The fella who actually pulled cash out forked over for the smaller, rougher one once he heard the house had a name and a wake in it before the flood. So I've started putting a four-line story under every print on the site instead of "giclee print, acid free, signed." Not the poem, not the essay, just the bones of it. The hare one is now "she sat in the field behind the house the winter I stopped drinking and I thought we were the same animal." Early days but the page views are up and somebody actually messaged asking about the woman in the story. It's not a strategy, it's just me finally telling people why I carved the bloody thing instead of acting like the image should do all the work. Reckon the marketing crowd would call it storytelling. I call it being arsed to talk to people, which is the one thing I'm actually good at. Anyone else ever sold the story and not the picture? Or am I just talking to myself here.

There's a Saturday market in Galway I've been doing on and off for maybe twelve years. Rain, hail, the odd glorious day where everyone's in great form. And I used to think the point of it was to shift prints, which it is, but the real thing it taught me is how to talk to people about what you make without sounding like you're selling. You get all sorts at a stall. The tourist who wants something that says Ireland without being a leprechaun on a toilet. The local who stops because they recognise the pier or the mountain. The person who clearly loves the work but hasn't got thirty quid and stands there turning a card over in their hands. And you learn, quick, that the ones who buy aren't the ones you try to convince. They're the ones you just talk to, normally, about the carving or the ink or the hare that lives in the field behind your house and won't let you get near it. The thing that stuck with me is this: I've never sold a print by telling someone how good it is. I've sold plenty by telling them the story of the night I carved it and nearly took the tip of my finger off, or how the block got dropped in a puddle and the crack became part of the print. People want the thing behind the thing. They don't want a pitch. Anyway. The market's grand for that. But online, I still catch myself trying to sound like a proper business instead of just a fella in a jumper with ink under his nails. And the minute I do that, engagement drops off a cliff. The posts that work are always the ones where I forget I'm supposed to be marketing and just talk about what happened today. Sure I don't know where I'm going with this except that the best marketing advice I ever got was from a woman buying a print of a heron who said "just tell me why you made it" and walked away with two.

A fella came up to me at the Saturday market in Galway, couple of months back. Wanted a heron, A4 size, framed, for his mother's 80th. Lovely fella, genuinely, stood there chatting for twenty minutes while I was trying to pack down. I was feeling generous, the sun was out, I said I'd do it for €180 framed and he near bit my hand off. Anyway. Carving took me the guts of three days. Proofing, a couple of plates I wasn't happy with and started again. The frame was €45 alone because the cheap ones looked like muck. Felt matting, the board, ink, the blades I went through. Add it up and I reckon I made somewhere around €9 an hour on the carve itself, and that's before you count the drive to the framing shop and back twice because I measured wrong the first time. And the man's mother cried when she saw it, apparently. Which is lovely. It genuinely is. But I've been doing this twenty years and I still price from the gut instead of the shop floor and I'm raging at myself about it. €9 an hour for work that's better than that. Where's the line between the joy of a person loving your thing and you just being a cheap date? Asking for a friend. Actually no, asking for me, because I clearly can't be trusted with the arithmetic.