E word

Better late than never, my 'E' word for my collaboration with Swedish book artist Eva Hejdström: Enmesh – to become entangled in something. This was a bit experimental - playing around with layers of rubber stamp stencils, and also stamping over a taped 'net' of threads.

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 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.

Printing by numbers

Week three of the stencil monoprint evening class was a little more out of my comfort zone. One of Sophie's drawings was used as a basis for everyone in the class to create a multi-layered stencil print - really surprising how different they all ended up looking. I found it quite a challenge working on a predetermined image, making decisions on colour and composition as each stencil was cut. However, it was really interesting to see how quickly you can build quite a complex print from a sketch, and also that there's room for a bit improvisation if things don't go quite to plan (see layers of foliage, and unwanted ink splotch that became a bird). 

Forest

Trial and error with stencils and stamps

Small-scale mock-up to work out pagination when setting up the artwork 

A re-working of a one-off book of rubber stamp stencil illustrations I made a couple of years ago. I deconstructed the original book and scanned each page before enlarging the layout and getting it digitally printed as flat A2 sheets (by the excellent printed.com). I created new stamp-stencil artwork for the title bellyband. The format is a double concertina, which took a bit of head scratching to get the pagination correct. But it’s a very pleasing, solid structure once assembled. Scalpel at the ready to cut down and make up the first ten...