Bulgarian Folk Costumes

Over summer I wanted to challenge myself and push both my drawing and printmaking as well as continue to develop more folk art themed work. So I have been working on a series of new screen prints inspired by traditional Bulgarian folk costumes and also Bulgarian wooden dolls. There are many different costumes, all of them are colourful and very ornate so to begin with I found it difficult to make sense of them. Looking at the simple wooden dolls made it much easier for me to interpret the folk costumes. I was able to identify the key elements, simplify them and produce black and white artwork for four colour screen prints. Although I have already printed this design it isn't finished and as well as redrawing some parts I will probably add a fifth colour.

More Mythical Creatures

Much of this year has been taken up with creating, organising and installing the Mythical Creatures exhibition. In April the exhibition finished at Here Gallery in Bristol and then there were just a few weeks to get it ready to go to Hereford College of Arts in May. Alot of the work had sold including some originals and the exhibition space at HCA was much bigger than at Here so it meant framing more prints and in some cases even making new work. I had screen printed card mobiles to hang in the windows at Here Gallery but there were more windows to fill at HCA. It was a real challenge and quite daunting, I spent hours screen printing, folding, gluing and cutting recycled card to make sure I had enough mobiles. I also created a series of simple floral designs which were cut from vinyl to make colourful wall and window decals. It took about a day to hang the mobiles in the windows so there wasn't enough time left to install as many of the vinyl decals as I would have liked to. I also forgot how difficult it is putting decals in windows and on a hot sunny day it is especially torturous.I'm looking forward to doing more large scale installations combining screen printing and vinyl decals, but perhaps not quite as big in future.

Folk Tail Cat and Kittens

First of all I reworked my original Folk Tail Cat drawing, rescanned the artwork, reprinted the acetates and then at last was able to print an edition of the finished design. Next came a litter of kittens, actually just mini versions of the Folk Tail Cat on A4 Fabriano paper. Some of the kittens have already been packed and posted to shops so I hope they find new homes soon.

Tale of the Folk Tail Cat

I decided to combine my interest in folk art with something else close to my heart and this is is the result, a new three colour screen print inspired by my little ginger cat. Of course a ginger cat means there has to be orange and lots of it, but this time I've also included my newest favorite colour, buff titanium. 

A Cornucopia of Cards

This year I've been working hard to add to my collection of cards and these are some recent designs. There are more to come but hopefully no more orange, it's definitely time to try out some different colour combinations.

What's New Pussycat?

Do you like pink? Do you like Cats? And do you like Tom Jones? If so it's your lucky day because I've printed this card especially for you, yay!

I Only Have Pies for You

Do you love someone who loves pies? Me too, so I made him this card as well as a few hundred others. Once I've drawn my design, tweaked it in photoshop and printed the artwork for each colour onto acetate, the rest of the process is fairly straight forward. I usually only screen print around 100 cards at a time and then print more as and when I need them. It's a little bit easier to print two cards together onto A4 sheets of 280gsm recycled card, then use a bone folder and guillotine to fold and cut them by hand. But it still is a labour of love and not something I would recommend!