Exhibition visit: 79th Annual Exhibition from The Society of Wood Engravers

Yesterday I visited the 79th Annual Exhibition from The Society of Wood Engravers, at the 44AD Gallery in Bath. I was so impressed by the level of detail and workmanship in the prints that I felt I had to share my favourites with you. I have never tried wood engraving myself but I have tried Lino printing and found that quite difficult to get my head around, I think wood engraving must be super difficult! (and time consuming) it makes you really appreciate this ancient art form. The exhibition has now come to an end but you can see images of all the pieces on the Society of Wood Engravers' website.

The Sailmaker's Garden by Barry Woodcock

Dunnock in the Camellia by Cathryn Kuhfeld

Partrishow by Kathleen Littler

Lifeboat by Terry Browne

Greenhouse by Geri Waddington

The Tortworth Chestnut by Peter Collins

Cherry Blossom by Rosamund Fowler

Lewesdon Hill Beeches by Howard Phipps

Edward Thomas: A Landscape Journey by Neil Bousfield

Apple Pressing by Bob Guy

The Contemporary Craft Festival 2016 - Favourites Part 1

A couple of weekends ago I visited the Contemporary Craft Festival, in Bovey Tracey which I visited last year, and posted about here. Here are a collection of my favourite artists and designers and their work. You can find out more about the festival and all the artists here.

Ceramics

Kate Evans Ceramics 
Kate creates beautiful porcelain vases inspired by nature and plants, having a background in gardening.  I enjoyed the simplicity of her designs.

 

Elaine Bolt Ceramics
Elaine creates hand-thrown ceramic objects and vessels in porcelain, terracotta and mixed media. Her use of everyday and found objects in her work gives it a unique quality, as though it is telling a story.

Katherine Lees Ceramics

Katherine makes porcelain vessels and jewellery, and then she screen prints directly onto the clay surface. Katherine says: "The decoration adorning the surface of the vessels is inspired by the cabinets of curiosities popular in the Victorian Era. I am fascinated by the forms they contained and the way they were labelled and categorised." Her work really reminds me of old ceramic medicine bottle that you sometimes find at flea markets, but much more refined and beautiful. 

Printmaking

Robin Mackenzie

Robin is an illustrator and printmaker whose work I greatly admire! I love woodcut printing and how the medium gives a pleasant old-fashioned feel, mostly because the techniques and materials are the same ones that have been used for centuries. Robin's colourful reduction linoprints depict everything from scenic countryside to industrial cityscapes.

 

Jess Davies

Jess is a talented printmaker and member of the Devon Guild of Craftsmen who uses a variety of printmaking techniques such as Lino printing and Etching. You can see the landscape of the Devon countryside has much influence on Jess' work.

Lucy Gell

Another artist who uses a variety of printmaking techniques is Lucy Gell, who creates humourous and fun animal prints. Some of Lucy's techniques include Collograph printing, Acid plate etching and Monoprinting. I really like the humourous style of Jess's work, it really made it stand out for me.

Richard Shimell

Richard uses lino or soft flooring material to create his prints. I really admire the detail and texture within his work, I think it is quite difficult to get such detail with lino prints! I always end up chopping through bits that I wanted haha. Richard lives on the edge of Dartmoor and the influence of the surroundings is clearly evident within his work.

 

 

Some more lino prints

You may have seen my previous post where I shared my lino prints, well I decided to try them out again on some different paper stocks, and with two different green colours (although I'm not too sure that you can see the difference here on my scans). It was fun to use the big albion printing press instead of just rolling over the paper with a roller as I had previously done, and also this time I used oil-based inks which can give a deeper and richer colour.

Camellia and Chrysanthemum Flower Screen Prints

My latest Screenprints are of a pretty Camellia and Chrysanthemum flowers in full bloom, in the style of vintage botanical drawings. I used a bright crimson ink for the petals which contrasts with two shades of green for the stem and leaves, and a delicate grey for the darker areas. I found the original drawings in a children's annual, and had quite a job to create the colour separations for the actual screen prints. I am used to drawing and tracing things using vectors in Illustrator, but for these I had to remind myself how to use Photoshop to separate out the right bits but I got there in the end!
I hope you like the results.

Screenprints of Volkswagen T1 Split Screen Camper Van Micro Bus

A whole load of prints on the drying rack

I've gone back to screen printing lately, and decided to this quite ambitious set of T1 Split screen Volkswagen Camper Van prints. I drew the image myself, scanned in the outline and then created the separations, deciding on a main colour, silver for all the metalwork, and a black outline. I thought it would be cool to use some coloured paper as the main areas for some of the vans, so I set about cutting out the paper for the main parts. Printing on top of these collaged areas proved to be more ardous than I thought, trying to get all of the ink out of the screen on top of the raised paper was difficult! However I am really pleased with the results. I also printed pink, lime and yellow versions, and printed onto some colourful pieces of wall paper that I had from a sample book. I think my favourite is the pink chequered collage one, I think I'll put it up on my wall. The rest of the 'Vans are available to order through my Etsy shop: welaughindoorsuk.