My ‘pleasure is an egg’ rubber stamp - part of Sarah Bodman’s wonderful collaborative project to mark World Book Night 2016. Forty rubber stamp prints Inspired by ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood, ‘Serena Joy’ is a box of forty, eclectic rubber stamp prints. More details on the project, including the production process, can be found here, and also here. With thanks to Mette-Sofie D. Ambeck for expertly printing my egg!
The perils of a momentary lapse in concentration
One silly mistake and a whole book is ruined. Bah.
Letterpress loveliness
Spent a very enjoyable few hours on Saturday at the British Printing Society Fair… over 40 stalls of letterpress and printing paraphernalia. A very generous goody bag was given on arrival containing all manner of printed matter. Picked up a couple of bargains - two vintage boxes of envelopes (£2!) and an amazing book called ‘A Handbook of Type and Illustration’ (by John Lewis, 1956) which includes beautiful reproductions of work by Edward Bawden, Edward Ardizzone and George Chapman. The highlight was a talk by Martin Andrews from the University of Reading who spoke about the life and work of Robert Gibbings. Totally fascinating, and a real privilege to see print proofs of collaborations with Eric Gill from the Golden Cockerel Press handed round.
Hats and Shoes
A fiddly, but enjoyable, few hours proofing linocuts for two new books.
Collage tree
Using rubber stamp off-cuts
Rubber plants
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
Four colour stencil print on Somerset paper
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...
