Way back in February (…that’s seems an age away) I ran an amazing two day workshop and as it relates to the online workshops I’m running over the next two weeks I thought I would share it with you. But first some background…

Two years ago I almost gave up printmaking. I was deep in the throws of painting and couldn’t see a way I could bridge the two media. Painting was allowing me an expressive freedom that printmaking hadn’t fulfilled, even with my adventures into monotypes. I had had a very successful exhibition in Spain, almost completed Nick Wiltons CVP course for the second time, and had been asked to take part in Norwich Print Fair. I’m not one to run away from a challenge so I decided I need to work out what it was about printmaking that I was finding unfulfilling.

I was booked to go on a residency in Cornwall, to Brisons Voer, a small studio with accommodation at the very South Westerly edge of the UK, with waves crashing against the cliffs and Poldark themed tearooms at every turn. I became inspired by the geology of the area, of the ancient tin mines.

Back in my studio I decided to re-invent my printmaking. Using the work I had done in Cornwall I used a range of pastes and gels to create collagraph plates, as painterly and as expressive as I could make them. I wrote a blog post about them here.

Fast forward to 2019, the same time of year and I was heading to Derbyshire to take part in a workshop run by Lewis Noble. One of the many things I took from that was his approach to selecting areas from your sources that lead me into a long journey that still continues into what I now call ‘found compositions’ . By that I mean compositions that ‘work’ but were not intended at the point of execution.

Back in my studio during the summer I experimented with what I hoped would be a new approach towards both my printmaking and painting. By ‘finding’ sections of my drawings to inform series of printing plates, translating the expressive tones, lines and textures using the gels and pastes that I use in my paintings.

• 

• 

• 

In the workshop in February I wanted to show my participants how printmaking could be a painterly, expressive experience if approached with intuition rather than planning.

On the first morning they created expressive monochromatic drawings using a range of media. I encouraged them to work intuitively, to see what would happen, use a range of tools and to work large. All of the participants were experienced artists and were confident in their approach to markmaking, and above all trusted that what I was asking them to do would be creative and exciting.

The next stage was learn about the variety of tones that could be achieved with acrylic pastes and gels. Once they had this knowledge they moved on to isolate areas of their drawings, to ‘find’ compositions that had a range of marks, textures and tones and translate these to their printing plates.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Having made 4 or 5 plates they left them to dry overnight. The next day was an amazing day of printing, lots of gasps of excitement as they lifted the paper from the press.

• 

• 

• 

I was too busy helping, tidying and making tea to take decent photos but Jill Ogilvy kept a record of her stages and the following images are all hers. (Thanks Jill!)

Here you can see the section Jill had chosen to translate into a printing plate, she laid down a range of media. Including sprinkled on silica carbide grit to get the ‘charcoal’ effect

She printed the initial plate to see what she had and then added to it. The large dark shape is a piece of silk organza glued on.

This was Jill’s final print, showing arrange of shapes, tones and textures.

Above you can see another of Jill’s pieces in progress. The section of the drawing and the plate she made as a response to it. This plate started as a silk background, but she could also have used card or an absorbent paste like Light Molding paste to start with the dark background.

On the initial print Jill decided this was much darker than she wanted, and lacked the range of tones in her drawing

To remedy this she went back to the plate with sticky back aluminium foil. She could have used a gloss gel or varnish to get the same effect. But the foil is instant!

This is the original drawing and the final print. As you can see the range of tones, lines, shapes and textures are dynamic and painterly.

I hope that enable you to see the potential of this form of printmaking. The use of the ‘found compositions’ is something I also use in my paintings, and has become a focus for my MA studies where I’m drawing found objects and from those drawings finding compositional sections to translate into paintings. But that’s another blog post!

Thanks to Jill Ogilvy for all her help! 🙂