Mussels and Chitons - New marine invertebrate prints

 Looking ahead to some #InsertAnInvert2024 prompts, I made some linocut marine invertebrates.

Blue Mussel, linocut, 8" x 8" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

The blue mussel (Mytilus edulis), or common mussel, is a medium-sized edible marine bivalve mollusc in the family Mytilidae. They are aptly called common mussels and are found on temperate beaches worldwide. They are also yummy.

A more complicated print is my lined chiton. They are extraordinary wee animals, which come in all sorts of colours. 

Lined Chiton, Linocut, 5" x 7" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

The lined chiton, Tonicella lineata, is a beautiful, colourful tiny marine mollusc of the North Pacific. Each 5 cm (2") long animal has zigzag purple or black lines on eight valves on a array of different colours like brown, red or burgundy like here but can also be bright blue or yellow to orange with a hairless girdle in colours like brown to red or pink, often with regular yellow or white patches. It is found from the Aleutian Islands of Alaska to San Miguel Island of California, as well as the Sea of Okhotsk of Russia and northern Japan in the intertidal to subtidal waters of 30 to 90 m (100 ft to 300 ft) depth. It's thought their colourful bodies are intended to camouflage against algae. They are prey of the ochre starfish.

Chitons are also sometimes known as sea cradles or coat-of-mail shells or suck-rocks, or more formally as loricates, polyplacophorans, and occasionally as polyplacophores.

Each print is made on 12.7 cm x 17.7 cm (5" x 7") printmaking paper. Because this is a reduction print, after each colour, I carved away more of the block, this is a limited edition of 12 prints. When they are gone, there will be no more originals.