Low-Tech Printmaking

"Drawings are almost always the product of adventure and struggle, and metaphorically speaking, every drawing has a potential dragon that needs slaying on the way to freeing the princess, or securing the pot of gold. It's the fisherman's struggle to lure and land the fish, and our own search for the Holy Grail."

"For the purposes of drawing, we should always look at objects as if they were new and unfamiliar - in a state of enquiry - and without the labels: wisdom is the forgetting of all you know. (Arthur Schopenhauer)"

From: 'Drawing Projects/ an exploration of the language of drawing' by Mick Maslen and Jack Southern'

In this workshop we explored simple and inexpensive printmaking techniques, such as monoprinting, potato printing and stencilling. Some ideas for this were taken out of "Print Workshop - Hand-Printing Techniques + Truly Original Projects" by Christine Schmidt - a very inspiring book for anyone interested in affordable printmaking workshop techniques.

For monoprinting we used acetate sheets, a few brayers, block printing ink and newsprint. We started drawing from observation and slowly built up a composition by adding details with various techniques and tools. There are no rules and limits and it was nice to see how quickly people came up with own ideas and variations of techniques.

For the potato prints we used common potatoes, halved them and cut into them with lino cutters. Some of us then went on to cut stencils into newsprint to layer more blocks of colour over the finer detail of the monoprints.

Ken's monoprint

Katherine's monoprint

    Nancy's layered monoprint

Carole's Tile Workshop

Carole brought in gloss white tiles from a DIY store, which she had prepared with a spray-on glaze.  Some were already fired with a black glaze and then covered with unfired white (to enable a black drawn line), then there was a choice of green, red, blue or black over the white.

    Jo used scratching tools and a paintbrush

The unfired glaze was quite stiff but powdery and masks were advisable when making the sgraffito marks.  A number of different tools were used from dental instruments to brad awl, pins, scalpel and brushes.  Water, where it dissolved the glaze was effective too.

    A selection of the finished tiles

Fiona's Tile Workshop

Last Wednesday saw the first workshop of a series that we aim to organise and present over the next months as part of our MA in Sequential Design and Illustration at the University of Brighton. We are Katie, Jo, Fiona and Nele, and our idea for the workshops started off with creative get-togethers during the summer months that were aimed at keeping our experimental practice going. 
For the next months ahead, we hope to run a few regular events for our course (such as one on drawing movement and one on low-tech printing techniques) and finish those with a workshop on easy zine-making in the new year. We are all unexperienced in teaching and running events like those, so it'll be a bit of a challenge, but also a fun way to learn and practice. 

Fiona did a fantastic first workshop on working onto raw clay tiles, and has put an amazing effort into structuring and organising it (well done again for carrying all those buckets of slips and water up the 5 flights of stairs!) She showed us 3 different methods: 1) Simple Sgraffito, 2) Stencilling and 3) Printing from cotton cloth.

Sgraffito entails adding one or several layers of slips onto the raw (red) tile. Eventually one can draw with a sharp instrument into the tile, cutting through the layers of slips, and end up with a red-line drawing on the tile. 

    Katie's Sgraffito Tile

Stencilling sounds easier than it is. A shape is cut out of newspaper, dampened, and then applied onto the tile - it has to be flattened completely, otherwise the slip will leak. Wet paper also rips in no time! Then a layer of slip can be painted over the stencil, printing the shape onto the tile. This can be done in several layers.

    Fiona's stencilled Proust armchair

   drying tiles and choosing designs

Finally we attempted the cotton print technique. For that we painted with slip onto a clean cotton cloth, painting one or several layers over each other, being aware that the first layer/ drawing would show on top of the next layer, when printed onto the tile. When the slip had dried a little, the cloth would be placed face down (the painted side down) onto the tile. We then used a plastic spoon to rub the slip through the cotton cloth onto the tile. A bit tricky to do neatly but good fun! Images of the ready burnt and glazed tiles will follow shortly.

    Hannah combined stencil and sgraffito on a triptych

    Marks can be made with a rubber or a sharp instrument.  Carole.

    Nele's delicate marks reach both the white and red layers underneath