One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Here is one of my original thumbnails, from a selection I chose this idea to develop into a cover.

As you can see there have been various changes and developments along the way. 

So this was my final entry to the Penguin Design Award.... Combining both printmaking and digital technology. This was obviously an uneasy task as printmaking takes much time and planning. I also find that once I  convert a purely hand rendered and crafted piece of work into a digital file, a new perfectionist kind of view of my work appears. Daunting me with new worries and issues that I had never considered before, but I think that this is all down to the sudden unrestrained freedom found in using a computer. However I am pleased with the simplistic design, and hope that it conveys what I was initially attempting to achieve. I added colour after etching, using the offset machine, which was very exciting and efficient... once I had made the stencils!! 

Thanks for taking an interest :)

For the love of printmaking!

Antique Key:

Handmade rubber stamps of keys:

Collagraph of various keys:

Collagraph of single key:

Long time... no post!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately... Having returned to Uni for my third and final year (yes, I cannot believe it, has gone way too fast!), I have been busy doing work and enjoying some socialising :) Anyway for our Launch project we were asked to do a variety of tasks, which involved us thinking about our future possible directions. This involved placing our work into a variety of different contexts, to see how our imagery could function in a different setting or for a different audience. Here are a select few (well nearly all..) of mine:

Thankfully I had a lot of good raw material to play around with, from all of the printmaking I did in the last module of second year. As you can see, I used an etching of an old record that I printed and some collagraphs of cassette tapes that I created. It was a valuable exercise and definitely something I would consider repeating in the future, to find other outlets for my illustration. I am pleased with the results and wouldn't mind owning a few of the outcomes, if I may say so myself. Hope you like them too..

Thanks for reading x

Printmaking (Original post dated: 07/05/11)

Last weekend I visited a printmaker Sue Stewart, through a local Arts Week (Somerset). She creates collagraphs in her own little studio, using all sorts of methods and ideas, which she seemed keen to share with me. She even gave a demonstration of her printing technique, which was very interesting. She forms collagraphs using all sorts of materials including tile adhesive, sand mixed into glue, as well as more natural materials such as feathers and plants. By rubbing colour into the surface of the plate, she achieves much more detail and depth in her prints, rolling on a final colour at the end of the inking process. She gave me a lot of advice and tips for printing collagraphs, which I can’t wait to experiment with in the print room! She even gave me a free print and offered me the use of her press if need it, which is very kind of her. Here is the free print I was given ...........

The selective placement of the hand mixed colour on the collagraph plate, accentuates the texture of the embossed paper.

La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

Above are my woodcuts from our induction workshop, which featured as part of the last module. I chose to use Plywood which was probably not very sensible, as you are only able to cut in one direction (following the grain). However I really loved the look of the textures achieved with Ply and this can be seen in my prints, which I am pretty pleased with. I chose La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, as the subject for my woodcut because in the current project I am designing a book cover for a guide to the wonderful city. I miss it! Hope to get out there sometime soon though.

Over and out. x