Screen Printing Workshops 2015

It's only February and I've already run several screen printing workshops this year plus I have more planned for the next few months. At the moment it seems like they have taken over my life especially as there is always so much preparation involved. As well as buying extra materials and equipment I've spent alot of time experimenting with making paper stencils to screen print with. I particularly like using hand cut stencils because they force me to work in a different way from how I usually create images. There is very little drawing involved and it's much more about cutting, printing and layering different colours and shapes. With a bit of perseverance I hope to improve and develop so I can use the technique more for my own work as well as teaching.    

Russian Dolls

Something else I've been screen printing alot of lately is Russian dolls. Each doll is made of 3 screen prints so they take quite a while to print and assemble. 

Screen Printed Cards for Winter

I've added some new bird designs to my card collection for winter. They are inspired by Eastern European design particularly the work of Bulgarian graphic artist Stefan Kanchev. I've also been looking at traditional folk costumes, vintage Russian toys and children's books. The result of this is two more Russian doll cards and I hope I'll find time to do more soon!

Screen Printed Window Display

Last year the Shop at the Old Fire Station in Oxford asked for some of my screen printed decorations for Christmas and I offered to create a window display as well. I spent the first few weeks of November screen printing an entire flock of birds with lots of bronze metallic ink. I also printed orange and gold flowers and some red and gold Russian dolls. Next came several long evenings of folding, sticking, cutting and assembling the decorations ready to install. There were so many birds I was still cutting them out on the train to Oxford. After about 6 hours in the window and 50 metres of nylon thread the display was finished!

Sheffield Print Fair

November is probably the busiest month of my year and over the next few weeks I'll be going to Oxford, London and Nottingham. This weekend I'll be exhibiting at Sheffield Print Fair as well giving a screen print demonstration there. There are printmaking demonstrations throughout the day and they are a good opportunity to learn about different techniques. I've done the print fair once before and was really impressed by the quality of work on show. I'm looking forward to seeing some great prints and meeting lots of other print-makers.
Sheffield Print Fair
Saturday 15th November 2014 10am-4pm
St Mary's Church & Conference Centre  
Bramall Lane  
Sheffield
S2 4QZ
sheffieldprintfair.blogspot.co.uk

Eye Candy Festival in Birmingham

Girls Who Draw have been offered a commission for this year's Eye Candy Festival in Birmingham. The festival is a great opportunity to promote ourselves and our Marine Life postcard book but it's also quite a challenge. Everyone involved in the book is so busy, we're very rarely in the same place at the same time. Added to which we are based in different parts of the country including Birmingham, London, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester and even Cornwall. So it's taken a while to organise our contribution but there will actually be four of us at Eye Candy and we'll be running printmaking and drawing workshops throughout the festival. I'm particularly looking forward to a visit from Belinda Chen. She'll be taking a break from screen printing at East London Printmakers to come and help me run a screen printing workshop at Eye Candy on Friday the 14th of November.
Eye Candy Festival 13th - 15th of November 2014
Boxxed
104 Floodgate Street
Digbeth
Birmingham 
B5 5SR  
eyecandyfest.tumblr.com

Witches at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre

At the end of summer Girls Who Draw were commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company to create another set of characters. This time we each had to illustrate a witch and two humans who had been transformed into animals! I chose to look at Elizabethan woodblock prints of witches for inspiration which is why my characters are dressed in Tudor style costumes. 

        

Once again the characters were printed life size onto vinyl and applied to the same wooden blocks as in the Who Wears the Trousers? exhibition. But this time the blocks were positioned in different places around the theatre and used for a Halloween Activity Trail. I've been waiting a while to see the finished witches and finally got to see them in situ during October half term.