I'm always not sure if I should put block prints in the paper, image reproduction or more art less craft forums. Craftster really needs a forum for fine art printing or just printing (not on fabric).
Anyway, after I carved my block for my linoleum Christmas cards (which I may post pictures of later but possibly after Christmas) I was inspired to make more linoleum block printed cards. These are inspired by some of my favorite animals to have gone extinct in the last 500 years.
This is the Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis). It was a big flightless bird related to puffins and murres that was formerly native to the North Atlantic. It was last sited on July 3rd of 1844.
This one is Steller's Sea Cow (Hydrodamalis gigas). It was a 3 ton manatee like animal that in prehistoric times lived along the North Pacific coast. It was first seen by Europeans when the Russian explorer Vitus Bering's ship was shipwreaked on the Commander Islands in 1741. The crew found the animals quite tasty and easy to catch and by 1768 it was extinct.
The final one is the Stephens Island Wren (Xenicus lyalli). It was a small flightless wren native to Stephens Island, a small uninhabited island off New Zealand's South Island. A lighthouse was built on the island in 1894 and the entire species was supposedly wiped out by the lighthouse keeper's cat named Tibbles in that same year.
