Prototype illustrations for a collaborative book project in response to a fantastic collection of cracker toys. Rubber stamps on top of scans of back-drawn monoprints.
Stamping sampling
Interesting to see the different results from using the same tiled stamps as a base, and then ‘accessorising’ with other hand-cut rubber stamps.
A Short History of Shoes
Carving lino blocks for a companion book to ‘A Short History of Hair’. Hats are also in the pipeline...
Seasonal production line
Gearing up for the annual production line of Christmas card stamping...
printmaking + animation
Inspired to investigate basic animation after a brilliant talk by Joshua Gaunt and Catherine Cartwright at yesterday's 'Redefining Print' symposium organised by Double Elephant Print Workshop in Exeter.
Pattern pimping
Using rubber and photo polymer stamps to add pattern to Paperchase blank notebooks.
Autumn leaves
A seasonal experiment in stencil printing...
Last but not least
My final stencil print from the evening course. Very quick to cut and print… a nice bit of instant gratification to round things off. The most successful prints were the ones with lots of roller textures - not quite like a relief print and not quite like a screenprint. I can now see how I can use this process with other techniques. Many thanks to the excellent tutor, Sophie Rae, for a really inspiring course.
Stencil swan
Final week of my stencil evening course and I’m finally starting to understand how I can use the process in my work. Even though they are technically monoprints, I’ve found myself naturally gravitating back to printing an edition. This is useful to compare slight differences though, like density of ink, roller direction and colour combinations.
First stencil prints
A really enjoyable couple of hours printing at the Folk House stencil evening class… I adapted my 'pot plant' linocut design to make a simple four colour stencil print. Interesting to see how the colour (Caligo safe wash ink) stays saturated on the plywood. I prefer the build up of texture on the paper prints though - it gives the image an extra dimension that's often missing from lino prints. By varying the direction and pressure of rolling, it's possible to differentiate between the foreground and background. The working life of one stencil is obviously limited - I did five prints from these stencils, but I think you could possibly push it to a run of ten prints.
Stencil scamps
Working out stencil print colour combinations for this week's evening class...
Stencils + folding
Playing around with patterned papers made on the stencil monoprint course - the random nature of the stencilling is an interesting combination with the geometric folds.
Stencilicious
Just started a new evening class at the wonderful Folk House in Bristol - ‘Monoprinting with Stencils’ run by Sophie Rae. It was a really enjoyable first week, getting stuck in straight away. Just basic shapes with water-based ink, but I was amazed at the variety of tone and texture you can get with just using a roller. Lots of possibilities, but my first thought is that this would be an ideal method for printing patterned endpapers.
Let there be colour…
The first layer of my jigsawed woodcut. Small rollers are essential to avoid muddying the colour separation. All the inked component parts are held together in cardboard jig before printing. Very excited to be able to print five colours in one press. Petals and patterned background will be added on the next layer…
Beginning a jigsaw puzzle
Finally got round to dusting off my scroll saw and cutting some woodcut plates into jigsawed component parts. This will enable me to print multiple colours at one time without needing to worry about registration.