Mono Printing, Wood Block Printing and Lino Printing Workshops! 

This was a great opportunity to try out different skills in a series of workshops, building up technical skill and knowledge of some printing techniques. 

I was particularly pleased that this was very sucessfull with young people, learning how to use tools and create some lovely pieces of art that they could take home. 

For the printing we used water based inks, that could be used for all the printing processes, and was easy to wash off and store. 

For Mono Printing we used a large heavy duty plastic sheet, glass is more ideal however this worked well, and we tried different ways of making marks into the ink. After the participants confidence grew in this we moved on to drawing onto polystyrene sheets that was an easy was of creating lino styled prints. 

Once  this was establised participants went onto, lino cutting and wood block carving to create small simple designs. I found that using reclaimed bits of wood was particularly good as we could chose from different styles and textures as well as hardness/ softness of boards.  

However using wood can be challenging when trying ot find the right type, so having knowledge on this is helpfull! 

Either way, these workshops were enjoyable and adults joined in as well, finding it very theraputic and fun. 

Making Nature tiles, was a great workshop that allowed participants to pick plants and flowers from nature. This made them think about textures and composition as colours will not come up in the casted imprint. 

To make these, I allowed them to explore there environment and pick a few small things to place and push into a small square cut piece of clay. 

Once they were happy with where they have placed there plants, they could then lift them off the clay leaving an imprint, which then allowed them to think about layers and creating an image from what they could see. 

Leave are particularly interesting as once you use a flower you can remove them and place the leaf in or around for the background which leaves a nice vein imprint. When they were happy with the image, we made a little wall around the tile with more clay, making sure it was sealed up, and then we mixed plaster of paris and poured this in and waited for it to set. 

I have experimented with cement mix and plaster of paris to create an interesting marble effect and a light grey tile where the embossed image came out very nicely. 

This turned out to be a very relaxing workshop, and I felt that the participants really enjoyed spending some time looking at the different plants and observing their textures and shapes. 

During the Easter/ Spring break I have been working on a few different workshops for young people and adults. 

I’ve been particularly interested in pigments and using natural materials to make paints. I’ve been exploring this process using old bricks, slate stones, sand stone, granite and different types of soil to see what colours can be picked up and out of these. 

By crushing and grinding these down to a powder I’ve seen some wonderful warm and cool earthy tones. 

I am now currently working on plant based pigments, such as drying out flowers or vegetables (like beetroot) and crushing them up to make different colours.