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

Four colour stencil print onto plywood

The original stencils before printing

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...

Printing by numbers

Week three of the stencil monoprint evening class was a little more out of my comfort zone. One of Sophie's drawings was used as a basis for everyone in the class to create a multi-layered stencil print - really surprising how different they all ended up looking. I found it quite a challenge working on a predetermined image, making decisions on colour and composition as each stencil was cut. However, it was really interesting to see how quickly you can build quite a complex print from a sketch, and also that there's room for a bit improvisation if things don't go quite to plan (see layers of foliage, and unwanted ink splotch that became a bird). 

Second week of stencilling

Experimenting with oil-based ink - richer colours and better levels of transparency. It’s all getting a little bit ‘Very Hungry Caterpillar’… childhood influences obviously run deep!

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…

Inked up plates assembled in a jig

First print of the first layer

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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.