Whilst still at school he attended the Cambridge School of Art one day a week, before gaining entry to the Royal College of Art.
In 1940 he was appointed as an official WW2 artist recording the war effort in Europe and the Middle East.
He is probably best known for his prints, bookcovers and posters, but his work also included murals, wallpaper designs, ceramics and watercolours.
I love his linocut prints, like the ones shown here, and I've used these as a basis for my own attempt at his style.
I haven't made a linocut before, so this is all new territory to me.
I started by looking closely at examples of work by Edward Bawden to see how he used lines and shapes to create the images.
I continued by sketching out ideas until I came up with some kind of image that was in his style, but was my design.
I transferred the design onto lino and began cutting out the areas that are to be left white - the remaining areas are to be printed in a dark colour - black or dark brown.
Many attempts later ... ... ... I started to print!
The best attempt so far is this one.
But I would still like to make alterations to it.
I think it would be improved by cutting away more of the background. This would have a two-fold effect - there would be more of a contrast between foreground and background (the background would be light with fine dark lines rather than dark with fine light lines) and the hard white line around the tiger would be softened.
However, I have spent a long time on this part of the project and I think I need to move onto the next bit, but I may return to this later.
Something I did try though - I took the image into photoshop and coloured the eyes!
