Tag Archive | Printmaking

I’m busy doing two courses at the moment (see previous three posts) and am rushed off my feet trying to squeeze in all the work from the annual ‘its the end of the financial year and you have to finish this project now!’ rush. So blogs-a-plenty to come but for the meantime, I’m going to stick to what I’m doing on my two brilliant, if a bit disparate, courses: ‘Advanced Certificate in Garden Design’ and ‘The Complete Printmaker’.

Week Two and Three on The Complete Printmaker looked at Drypoint and Carborundum. I discovered a love of dremelling to make my drypoint plates. Here’s a couple I produced of some sea birds – the Avocet and the Sanderling. I’ll post the actual prints once they’ve dried off – they’re very similar (but the other way round!).

in Illustrations, Printmaking
Leave a comment

Line drawings of my cameras

As part of my printmaking course, I’m creating a series of prints of cameras using different techniques. As we started the course with trace monoprinting, I got into doing line drawings of the cameras I own and now I can’t seem to stop. Here are a few of them. I’ll post the actual prints once completed.

Praktica Novex KAF

Panasonic Lumix FS-14

Boots 415 Disc Camera

Canon Ixus 430

January 16, 2013

in Printmaking
Leave a comment

The Complete Printmaker – Week One

I’ve just started a year long printmaking course called The Complete Printmaker at Hot Bed Press in Salford. Over the duration of thirty weeks we’ll be covering lots of different printmaking techniques and I’m hoping to learn lots about how to get better results and how to ink up plates properly!

Here’s my trace monoprint (or monotype) from week one. It’s from a collection of drawings I’ve just started of all the cameras I’ve ever owned. Below is the original drawing I made the monoprint from. Next week – Drypoint.

December 28, 2012

in Creative Workshops, Exhibitions, Printmaking
1 Comment

Printout at The Point, Doncaster

My monoprints are currently part of an exhibition called ‘Printout’ at The Point in Doncaster. Alongside three other artists, the exhibition looks more closely at some of the different print processes and how you get from the initial idea to the finished piece. Other types of printmaking included in the exhibition are linocuts, collagraphs and etching. The linocuts by Graham Firth are a particular favourite – the detail in them is amazing.

In the exhibition I included the glass I use for inking on (you can see it on the extreme left of the above image). It is a very messy and ‘covered in ink’ piece of glass but beautiful in it’s own right. I now use the clean side to ink on but have the pattern from previous leaves showing through as I work.

As part of the exhibition, I have done a couple of workshops at the Gallery – one with a group of adults and one Saturday drop-in workshop with children and their parents, where we created a big leafy tree as part of the exhibition. Here’s a close-up of some of the prints the children made.

March 13, 2012

Hyde Orchard Creative Sessions – Day Three

Block printing and paper mosaics on the menu today…

We had a school gardening group in the morning and trainees from the Park Cafe in the afternoon. The Cafe provided us with a lovely buffet and afternoon tea and cakes!

February 29, 2012

Hyde Orchard Creative Sessions – Day One

We did our first creative workshops to generate ideas and work for the Hyde Park Community Orchard artwork this week. Our first victims were 30 Year Ones from Godley Primary School, who enjoyed working out the seating arrangements for the outdoor classroom before playing a game of Fruit Salad in the Orchard. We then took the group inside Bayley Hall and used The Park Cafe for lots of art activities including mono printing, still life fruit drawing and making bird mosaics out of fruit.

In the afternoon a smaller group from Hyde Technology School attended to do some similar sessions, using local birds including Jays, Blackbirds, Blue Tits, Great Tits and Wood Pigeons as inspiration for their artwork. Both groups created lots of brilliant work, some of which you can see below.

October 25, 2011

Leaf Printing Art Walk – Dovestone Reservoir

I’m doing a workshop on Sunday 30^th October in partnership with Richard Dawson and the RSPB at Dovestone Reservoir in the Peak District.

The RSPB currently provide regular guided walks around the area of Dovestone though this one is a bit different in that it’s an ‘Art Walk’ and has more of a creative theme than previous walks. Participants will be collecting their own leaves from the woods around Dovestone, which they’ll then use to create beautiful monoprints to take home with them.

This leaf printing process is something I already use in my own practice (see my website www.jacquisymons.co.uk for more info) and not only is it an easy and interesting way to create some lovely artwork but you also learn a lot more about tree types and how to identify them.

Hopefully the workshop on Sunday will also get participants to look at and use the landscape in a different way and also to have a go at an art process they might not have tried. I’m seeing this as the start of many ‘Art Walks’ around Dovestone – there’s lots of possibilities!

The image below is one of mine – printed with leaves from a little oak tree at Dovestone.