Squeegee Rescue

Today I was down at Swansea Print Workshop and one of the little squeegees gave up the ghost, the old rubber blade split. No problem, it can be repaired. I removed the three crosshead screws holding it into the wooden handle and prised the broken blade out with a flathead screwdriver, wriggling it at bothContinue reading “Squeegee Rescue”

What’s Next?

As well as an artist, I’m an educator, working for decades in adult education, particularly with people who don’t normally fit into mainstream educational provision. I’m running a short introductory course in screenprinting at the moment, using paper stencils. The idea is to build up an image with several layers of ripped and/or cut stencils.Continue reading “What’s Next?”

Reusing Screen Inks.

There’s no glamour in being an artist, there’s loads of messiness and cleaning up. It’s also expensive and it’s important to reuse and recycle as many materials as possible. There’s always a lot of screenprint inks left over after courses at Swansea Print Workshop and if they’re stored properly they can be usable for months.Continue reading “Reusing Screen Inks.”

Prepping And Perspiration!

Crikey! This heatwave is getting a bit much. It’s cooler in the house than outside so I’ve been a bit like a cave-dwelling troll today, avoiding the intense sunshine outside. Still sweated cobs though. I did a load of prep for screenprinting. I put some designs onto screens with Speedball drawing fluid and got themContinue reading “Prepping And Perspiration!”

And A Little Bit Pear Shaped: 4

Towards the end of the day I spent up The Workers Gallery in Ynyshir last week, I had a fourth, final, attempt at doing a monotype with a silkscreen and Daler Rowney acrylic screenprint medium. My experiments with Inktense blocks were a miserable failure (here) so I switched to watercolour pencils. First, I printed aContinue reading “And A Little Bit Pear Shaped: 4”

Still Pear Shaped: 3

After disappointing results with the Inktense blocks*, I decided to switch to watercolour pencils. I’d done this monotype technique before and the results weren’t bad, so I thought I’d give it another go. I drew onto the screen mesh from an old portrait sketch, and then squeegeed Daler Rowney Screenprint Medium through it. The resultContinue reading “Still Pear Shaped: 3”

Then It Carried On Being Pear Shaped: 2

Following on from yesterday’s tale of defeat*, I had a think about what might have gone wrong and wondered if the Inktense marks on the silkscreen just didn’t get wet enough to release their vibrant pigments onto the paper. So I made the mesh nice and wet and drew onto it with the Inktense blocks.Continue reading “Then It Carried On Being Pear Shaped: 2”

Then It All Went Pear-Shaped: 1

I spent last Sunday up The Workers Gallery in Ynyshir, doing some experiments with silkscreen monotype techniques. I wanted to see if Derwent Inktense blocks would work, using them to draw from a small sketch directly onto the screen mesh. Once I finished sketching, I put a piece of paper under the screen and pouredContinue reading “Then It All Went Pear-Shaped: 1”

Trying New Things

I spent a lovely day at The Workers Gallery in Ynyshir at the weekend, trying out some new techniques for screenprinting. Gayle and Chris, the artists who run the gallery, are away so I jumped at the chance of taking over the space and experimenting without the distractions of home and cat. First priority, makeContinue reading “Trying New Things”

All The Different Layers – The Last One!

And here’s the final layer of the photo-screen print I did at a recent course a couple of weeks ago, with Scotland-based artist Kelly Stewart at Swansea Print Workshop. It came from a tiny quick sketch in ballpoint pen that I enlarged on a photocopier and then printed out onto an acetate sheet. This became the stencil for aContinue reading “All The Different Layers – The Last One!”