Month: May 2020

Liz Wellby is as an artist, teacher and maker. She creates a range of outcomes, which includes wire sculptures, lino prints,
woodcuts and monoprints. Liz also runs a range of creative workshops for Arts groups, galleries and museums.

Describe your printmaking processes.

I enjoy variety in my work, so I explore a range of printmaking processes including lino and woodcuts and a range of mono printing techniques. I enjoy the challenge of reduction techniques and the physical nature of the processes, plus I like the different qualities that each print allows you to create; linocuts have a sharpness, whilst the wood grain creates a more subtle printed surface. I also like to explore a range of mono printing techniques, as I can explore more drawn and painterly qualities. Lino and woodcuts require planning and precision, whilst monoprinting can be more intuitive and experimental and are less physically demanding on my elbow and fingers. Developing ideas for new workshops encourages me to try more techniques; I am really enjoying exploring mono printing with a Gelli Plate, using flowers as a masking technique and cutting stencils.

How and where did you learn to print?

I vaguely remember lino printing at secondary school, but I was fortunate to have some great print lecturers at Chesterfield College where I completed a Foundation course in the late 80s. It was a close-run thing, but I chose to study Sculpture at what was then Loughborough College of Art and Design, rather than printmaking. I don’t regret this, as I have come back to print, so I got to enjoy two creative disciplines.

Why printmaking?

I taught a range of Art and Design subjects at secondary level for a
number of years and printmaking was the natural choice when I felt the need to create Art for myself, rather than as part of my day job. I
needed processes that I could stop and start and complete at my kitchen table, so lino cutting and mono printing were natural choices. I see strong connections between the carving elements of sculpture and lino cutting, so it doesn’t surprise me that I chose printmaking. One of the things that I particularly like about printmaking, is that there are lots of processes to try.

Where do you work?

I work from my home studio in a small village on the edge of the Peak District. The studio and workshop next door allow for a very short daily commute in my slippers. It’s a beautiful space with views into the garden and down into the village and I feel very fortunate to have it. I also offer 1 to 1 tuition and workshops for a maximum of 5 people from The Slipper Studio.

Describe a typical day in your studio.

No two days are alike. I started running workshops from my studio a couple of years ago, so a lot of my time is been spent developing a range of creative workshops, which I promote through social media, on my website and CraftCourses.com. I usually advertise and run 3 workshops a month from February to June and September to November, plus another 3 or 4 for Art groups in different venues, so I have a lot of preparation to complete. However, I am trying to regain a balance between running workshops and creating a body of new work. The current situation with this extended period of lockdown and being at home, is allowing me time to think about what I want to make and the themes that most interest me.

What inspires you?

Living and working in Derbyshire is important to me, providing a significant visual resource for my work. The themes of home, countryside and the domestic environment inspire me, which I record and respond to.

What is your favourite printmaking product?

For years I was happy working with the red-handled student lino tools, but I treated myself to a box of Power Grip cutting tools and they are such a pleasure to work with. When my studio was up and running I bought a Gunning Etching Press, which I am really pleased with.

What have you made that you are most proud of?

I always hope it’s my next piece, as it inspires me to continue
making, trying out something new and keep developing as a maker.
That doesn’t mean to say that I don’t have my favourites and
fortunately, with printmaking, I can keep copies of one or two images.

Where can we see your work? Where do you sell?

The best way to see what I am working on is by checking out my
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts and on my
website. I am a member of the creative group, Peak District Artisans
and we come together a number of times a year to exhibit and sell
our work at venues across the Derbyshire Dales and the Peak
District, including an annual winter exhibition at Chatsworth House.

What will we be seeing from you next?

I am trying some small scale blind embossing with lino, which I am really enjoying. I am likely to explore adding detail with pen and ink,
along with adding ink in the traditional printing manner. I also feel that my range of woodcuts need adding to, with more images based on my cat Bert and a return to still life imagery; nothing if not varied.

Do you have any advice for other printmakers and creatives?

Keep trying out new ideas or images and explore them with different processes; an image completed as a linocut may not be wholly successful, but as a drawn mono print it may be completely different. Make notes about what you have done, i.e. how you created a particular colour, so that you can make it again without wasting copious amounts of ink. A print might not be a complete success, but cut out the sections you do like and keep in a sketch pad/ notebook; these may act as inspiration for new pieces. Attend workshops; it’s a really good way of developing your skills quickly,
with lots of opportunities to ask questions. And the best piece of advice I have ever been given – when mixing colours, only add additional amounts of colour the size of a grain of rice; it still amazes me how a little goes a long way.

Follow Liz on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest or head
over to her website.

I’m a Graphic Designer and Printmaker living in South East London. My style is inspired by Japanese art and geometry in design and nature and includes a signature colour palette recognisable with accents of neon tones.

I have worked on commissions with brands including Barbour, GLUG, ibis Hotels and also collaborations with creatives including US Studio, Special Edition Co. I sell my print work at markets and stockists across the UK, and I am always keen to take on new challenges, new projects or collaborations.

Describe your printmaking process.

My printmaking process starts with an initial idea usually in the form of a rough pencil sketch. I find it much better to put pen to paper and build a collection of drawings. I can then work from these ideas with a good picture of what I want to create before getting lost in the options once you begin to start working digitally.

How and where did you learn to print?

I studied Graphic and Media Design at The London College of Communication (LCC). But regretfully only took full advantage of the print studio in my third year of studying!

Why printmaking?

I first experienced screen printing on my foundation course, but due to a lack of confidence and understanding of how the print process could help me and my then traditional way of drawing and painting, I didn’t venture back into the print studio until a few years later.

When I finally got back into the print studio at LCC with a wonderfully encouraging tutor, Tony, everything started to click. For me, it was the ability to mix and make colours unachievable through digital printing techniques. I also became obsessed with making gradients, experimenting with halftones and the unpredictable results from overprinting with transparencies. It made me more free and experimental with my work and now I always keep all my test prints as they often inform new work and colour palettes too.

Where do you work?

I am a member at Sonsoles Print Studio in Peckham, so try and get there as much as possible. I also currently work full time as a Graphic Designer at innocent drinks, so fit my printmaking in around the evening and weekends when I can.

How long have you been printmaking?

I’ve been printmaking for 6 years now. After starting a career as a Graphic Designer, I was determined to keep up my printmaking practice as much as possible. I feel it pushes me to be more experimental in my graphic design work, and the print studio offers a space to be purely self-indulgent in my own practice.

What inspires you?

I get inspiration from all over the place. I’ve always wanted to go to Japan and finally made a trip there in 2018. I took hundreds of photos from tiled grids in the architecture to the coloured traffic cones in the street. The colour palette was so different there, it still inspires me today. I also love David Hockney and Matisse as masters in colour, and continually think of their fearlessness in pushing colour boundaries and bold colour choices.

Recently, like many other designers I’ve been massively inspired by the abundance of creativity across the country with rainbow illustrations, messages of hope and support for key workers pasted in windows forming street art galleries like we have never seen before.

What is your favourite printmaking product?

My favourite printmaking product is probably neon ink or neon acrylic paint! It’s essential in my palette and adds that glow unique to my printmaking.

What have you made that you are most proud of?

I’m probably most proud of a series of isometric prints I did for my degree show, as this was the first time I felt like I had conquered my challenges with the print room and come out with a new direction to my work that has continued to define and inform my personal practice today. 

Where can we see your work? Where do you sell?

I use Instagram as the most current portfolio for my work and love to show work in progress and inspiration too. I take direct orders from Instagram and have an online store emmafishershop.com

What will we be seeing from you next?

Inspired by the rainbow window artwork I have created a new print series. This is one of my first experiments into more typographic work and I’d love to take these designs into the print studio post lockdown.

Do you have any advice for other printmakers and creatives?

Definitely become a member of a local studio, either taking up a short course or join to keep up personal projects. It’s not only a great place to create tactile work and get messy but also be inspired by other printmakers and designers too.

For more from Emma:
Instagram @emmafisher_design
Facebook
Shop
Website

The ways in which we communicate with one another have changed recently and a lot of us are thinking about alternative ways to connect with friends and family. In this project, we show you how to design and print a stamp for the front of your envelopes to add something special to your snail mail to someone important to you. Use your stamp to frame the address on your envelope or parcel or around a little friendly note. You could even print and write a note, take a picture and send to a friend in a cute picture message!

Start with a rectangular piece of Mastercut, Lino, Vinyl, Softcut and other stamping blocks will also work. Carefully use a scalpel to cut a rectangle slightly smaller than your envelope.

Draw a design onto the Mastercut with a pencil. Draw the design around the edges, leaving a blank space in the centre for the address or message.

Use a scalpel to remove the blank centre of the stamp. This can be used for more stamps later.

Carve your design. Use a V tool or small U to carve the detail and remove the larger areas with a large U tool. Trim off any excess with a scalpel. We used a set of Japanese Cutting Tools and a 12/1 Pfeil Tool for the tiny detail.

Ink up the stamp using Versacraft Ink Pads. Lay the stamp face up on a flat surface and dab the ink pad all over it.

Use different coloured ink pads to blend colours and add pops of colour to specific areas.

Place the inked up stamp face down onto your paper, envelope or note card and press firmly down all over to print.

For this project you will need:
– Mastercut or other stamp carving material
– Cutting Tools (such as Japanese Tools or Pfeil)
– Cutting board
– Pencil
– Scalpel
– Versacraft Ink Pads (or small pads)
– Envelope or paper on which to print

I am a screen printer, working out of my Studio in Bedford where I am also mum to two children and various pets. I screen print Art Prints and Greetings Cards, I love bright colours and my prints more often than not feature animals, I am partial to a Dachshund and most recent piece is a large Pink Gorilla.

Describe your printmaking process.

I screen print so the process is a long one. Normally I start with pencil and pen illustrated sketchers, which get scanned into photoshop to be made into layers which are printed onto acetate, these get developed using UV lights onto my screens and each colour printed onto paper is a separate screen, it’s quite a process.

How and where did you learn to print?

I did a Fine Art Painting degree, mainly using oils (still painting Drag Queens and Dachshunds even then) but I touched on Screen Printing and loved it. fast forward 15 years, a career in London & 2 children and wanting to get back to a creative job that I could do whilst being able to pick my kids up from school and I just knew Screen Printing was the route I wanted to take.

Why printmaking?

I love the bold blocks of colour and building the image up in layers to produce an image.

Where do you work?

I am very lucky, I have a studio at my home in Bedford, we converted a patch of our garden, it’s my happy place.

Describe a typical day in your studio.

Well prior to lockdown, I would get my kids to school, walk the dogs and then spend the day either Printing at my Flat bed printer or Sketching and Developing new ideas for prints before School pick up at 3:30pm. Then I might get back in the studio at 8pm to work on admin like website and packing orders. Life has changed a lot since then, now with 2 children to home school I’m not finding I am getting as much time as I would like to print, we are muddling through the best we can.

How long have you been printmaking?

About 3 years

What inspires you?

Colour, I love bright colours and Clashing patterns, also animals, in particular, my Dapple Dachshund Minnie Moomin.

What is your favourite printmaking product?

NEON PINK INK every time!

What have you made that you are most proud of?

My recent print of a Pink Gorilla I am proud of, it took a lot of drafts and changes to get it exactly as I wanted it. I made a few by printing a base layer of Adhesive and using Pink Metal Leaf sheets as my base layer and then printing on top, it was my first time using metal leaf and I had a lot of goes before I was happy, but I rather love the camp pink beast I ended up with.

Where can we see your work? Where do you sell?

I mainly sell via my Instagram page @hannah_carvell this is where I post all my new work and progress shots I also have my own website www.hannahcarvell.com and a few Retail stockists dotted around the country.

What will we be seeing from you next?

I always have a few ideas on the go, I have a lot of requests for more large Abstract hearts, which I do really enjoy printing. I would also like to do more monkeys and a series of Staffordshire China Dogs, I sketched loads of these so long ago I would love to turn them into prints.

Do you have any advice for other printmakers and creatives?

If I still lived in London I would have joined one of the open studios to print, the facilities are all there as well as other people on hand to help you out in those early stages. I have been to Print Club London and Consoles Print Studio, both offer workshops to get you started. If that’s not a possibility then I managed to source most of my equipment 2nd hand on eBay and Gumtree, I got my Flat Bed printer from a School that was selling off old equipment on eBay.

For more from Hannah, follow her on Instagram!

Brusho is a fantastic dye to have in your creative kit. They come in little pots of watercolour crystals in a huge range of highly-pigmented colours. They can be used on lots of different surfaces but we especially like to use them on fabric. They’re not fixable on cloth so aren’t suitable for projects that will need washing but they make beautiful artworks and wall-hangings. Read on for a simple, easy project that’s great for adults and children.

Stretch a piece of thick fabric (calico works really well) onto a wipeable surface using masking tape. We’re using an old plastic sign. Taping it to a plastic table cloth is ok too.

Mask off a shape in the centre of the fabric. The masking tape will provide the edge of the design. You can choose to paint all the way to the edges of the cloth, in which case skip this step. We have masked a rough geometric shape in the centre. You can divide a larger piece of fabric into sections – try one for each member of the household!

Use oil pastels to draw a design. The oil pastel will resist the brusho dye. Wax crayons also work but you may need to go over the lines a few times to lay down enough wax from a crayon.

Fill larger areas with pattern.

Mix the Brusho dyes. Shake the Brusho bottle to mix the crystals well and then sprinkle a few crystals into a small amount of water in a jam jar. You don’t need much so start small and build up the colour with more crystals until you reach a shade you like.

Paint the Brusho dye onto the fabric. The oil pastel will resist the dye. Don’t overload the fabric with dye, spread it out with the brush.

Mix up more colours to fill in the different sections.

Blend the colours on the fabric by teasing them together with a brush.

When the dye is dry, peel off the masking tape to reveal the final design.

For this project you will need:

• Brusho dye
• Jars
• Brushes
• Thick fabric such as calico
• Flat, wipable surface
• Masking tape
• Oil pastels or wax crayons

Will is a graphic artist, designer and printmaker currently based in Brighton. He began freelancing full-time in 2018 and now divides his time between commercial work and personal projects. Will’s personal work explores improvisation and play within design through the use of modular systems and printmaking techniques.

Describe your printmaking process.

I’ve experimented with a variety of printmaking processes but for the majority of my work I use a process similar to block printing. I have a set of large rubber stamps in a variety of geometric shapes and stamp these piece by piece to create prints depicting typographic messages and graphic symbols. The idea was a follow-on from a previous project creating woodblock prints using a set of geometric tiles – by flipping the process and using the stamps, you have far less limitations and there’s a lot more opportunity for improvisation and play as the design develops.
  

How and where did you learn to print?

I did workshops in letterpress and silkscreen printing during my foundation and BA degrees and so I suppose I learnt the basics there but I never really engaged much with it at the time and I could have definitely have experimented more when I had access to all of those facilities. In terms of the printmaking I do now, a lot of what I’ve learnt has developed from trial and error and by messing around with print. It’s such a fun thing to experiment with and depending on the process it’s also very accessible and easy to jump into.

Why printmaking?

A lot of my personal work as a designer is focused on creative play and improvisation and I experiment a lot with modular systems and geometric shapes as a way of creating a variety of results very quickly. For me, the printmaking process is a way of capturing the results of that play experience and the unpredictable nature of print always adds an exciting twist to whatever you create.

Where do you work?

I have a studio space at New England House in Brighton and I do all of my freelance work and printmaking from there. For years I was doing the printmaking from home but when I started freelancing full-time it felt like a good point to find a bit of extra space. I share the studio with five other creatives, working in a variety of disciplines so it’s always interesting to see what everyone’s working on and it’s great being able to bounce ideas around and get some different perspectives.

Describe a typical day in your studio.

The day often depends on what freelance work I have to be getting on with. I’ve found the best way of balancing everything is to get in early and get started on the commercial work. Once the works been sent off I usually have a bit of time free to work on print ideas whilst I wait to hear back from clients. If I’m experimenting with something new I’ll either test some rough ideas out in Illustrator to get a sense of where I’m going with it or go straight for the hands on approach and start printing. As each design is printed block-by-block the process can be quite time consuming so I usually try and take a day a week where I avoid any digital work and focus completely on creating finished prints.

How long have you been printmaking? 

I sort of started by accident about three or four years ago – I was using these tangram-style, geometric blocks I’d had laser-cut to create typography and simple graphic forms. It was meant as an idea generation tool and originally I was just photographing the results and messing them back up before starting again. At some point it clicked that creating relief prints from them would be a far more pleasing way to capture the designs and I just loved the new dimension it gave to the project. After that I kept finding new ways to incorporate printmaking into my work.

What inspires you?

I’m a big fan of bits of everyday design and I really like old signage and pictograms, there’s something pleasing about taking an existing, recognisable image or message and putting it in a new context. When it comes to the big stamp prints I do, a lot of inspiration comes from just walking around – I find there’s patterns and grids built into so many things and this can help form the basis for an idea or show how certain forms could work together. In terms of other work that inspire me I think simple, thought through ideas always work best and I really enjoy anything that has a bit of charm to it.

What is your favourite printmaking product?

Discovering the caligo safe wash inks has been really helpful – they’re so easy to clean down and they get a nice print with the stamps I use. When I first started experimenting with woodblock printing I was using cheap waterbased inks and there was so much more trial and error to get a good print. I’ve also recently bought a Woodzilla printing press – I haven’t had a lot of time to experiment yet but I’m very excited to see what I can do with it.

What have you made that you are most proud of?

I’ve just finished working on something called the Alpha-Set – it’s a modular, 16 piece, rubber-stamp typography kit. I did a short run of it last year and had a really good response to it so have just finished work on a much larger run. A lot of work has gone into both the design and the production of the sets so I’m really pleased it’s finally all come together. The sets are sold through my website and I’m in the process of posting them all out so I’m very excited to see what everyone comes up with!

Where can we see your work? Where do you sell?

The best way to see what I’m working on and where I’m selling work is either through my website or through Instagram. I have an online shop on my website and I’m regularly posting up new projects and work in development on my Instagram account. At some point soon I’ll be taking part in some exhibitions and print fairs – I’ll be posting information about them on my Instagram account nearer the time so you can keep up-to-date there.

What will we be seeing from you next? 

I’m currently working on a design project that will mix elements of printmaking with digital/interactive design. I’ve got the idea down but it’s still got a bit of a way to go until it’s a reality so I don’t want to share too much yet – although I’m sure I’ll start sharing some bits on social media soon!

  Do you have any advice for other printmakers and creatives?

I think the most important thing I’ve learned is to try everything and play as much as possible with what your working with – a lot of ideas I have don’t really work the first time, whether in concept or application, but there’s still a lot of value in going through that process. Often something that doesn’t quite work out will help me find the missing piece for some other idea or will be the start of a whole new thing that I hadn’t thought of yet.

Follow Will on Instagram or head over to his website to see more.