Hand painted sign

A hand painted sign I created recently for my neighbour’s birthday. He has a music studio in the garden. As usual I forgot to take WIP photos but you can see the sketch that I originally drew in Procreate. I painted onto aluminium composite board which is beautifully smooth but super hard to transfer the design on to, and difficult to photograph! I’m really pleased with the result though. 

 

 

 

 

Ghost signs of Frome

Having recently looked at a called Ghost signs of Bath (Andrew Swift & Kirsten Elliott, Akeman Press), I remembered seeing a few really good ones in Frome, where I work. So I went out last week to photograph them all and, delightfully, some new ones have been revealed! Which is super great for me doing this blog post!

I expect a lot of people have visited Frome and seen the below ghost signs for A.S.Ashby which was once a photographic shop at the bottom of Bath Street. I love the way the top one has more than one layer of overlaying words and layers, known as a Palimpsest. Amazing how the vivid colour has survived!

Next I found this set of 3 three advertising ghost signs not far away on Palmer Street.

They're fairly hard to make out but I believe  this one says:

WEAVER

& SON

FOR

WALLPAPERS

DISTEMPERS

PAINTS

VARNISHES

 This one is harder to read but says:

[          ] WE STOCK 

[            ] AND

RECOMMEND

JOHN HALL'S

PROLAC

GLOSS FINISH

&

PROLAC PEP

PLASTIC EMULSION PAINT

FOR [      ] BOTH

... And the some more words I can't make out. 

John Hall & Sons was a paint manufacturing company in Broadmead, Bristol.

This sign around the side reads:

WEAVER & SON

FOR

GLASS

OIL

PAINT &

WALLPAPER

 

 Whist not actually a ghost sign, I like this metal sign for Colman's Blue, on High Pavement.

 Further up the same building as the Ashby Kodak signs, is this long section of text along the top. It advertises:

CHINA & GLASS SHOW ROOMS |  DINNER SERVICE | TOILET SETS, VASES, [      ]RES, PORTMANTEAUS | STATIONERY

I'm not sure what this shop was called but I guess it was a department store.

The following building on Badcox is currently being renovated, which I guess is how these beautiful ghost signs have been revealed.

I can't make out the bottom left or right text, but maybe I'll make another visit to try to find out. 

Some of the other sections read: 

Teas, Coffees Grocery AND PROVISION STORES

CHEESE, SALT Agent for HANSEN'S Cheese Rennet

THORLEY'S FOOD FOR CATTLE Ovum & Lactifer

Robin Starch

ZEBRA Grate Polish

Let me know if you've seen any more ghost signs in Frome!

Pick Me Up Graphic Arts Festival 2015 part 2

Welcome to the second part of my favourite things from Pick Me Up festival 2015.

I watched a lecture by Robert Sollis, co- fonder of Europa on how they developed this year's identity for the festival. The studio developed several different variations of their typeface to create a dynamic visual identity which I think looks appropriate to the event, which is about innovation, the handmade and unique.

Examples of the typefaces

The promotional posters for the event were hand screen-printed in three colours, and those that were too big were painstakingly hand painted (such as the large sign right outside the venue). I love the overprinting on the spotty words.

 

Screen printed poster

The wall inside the Pick Me Up platform room was covered in these posters, with keywords about the event.

Screen-printed keywords (borrowed from PMU Facebook page)

One of the most interesting things to me about the identity was the way that they used the colour separations from the screen-printed posters to inspire some cut out large installations for inside of the festival. I always think it's really cool how you can sometimes still make sense of an image/ text even when not all of the colour separations are present (when screen-printing). You can see on the image below what I'm on about (sorry it is a bit dark!)

Installation with parts of the typeface visible

Back to some of my favourite works.
I had a go at using a printing machine with Sope Studio. They had prepared a series of background patterns, which you could choose from and then choose a second tile to be printed on the top, creating some really cool bits of art (they're all featured on a special Instagram page). Here's mine:

Sope Studio tiles

The guys also had some great work for sale, some was again based on geology and rocks (a bit of a theme going on!) such as this one by Lydia Shirreff, and some more of their lino printed tile designs.

 

Finally I bought a print by LaTigre, a graphic design studio based in Milan, directed by the designers Luisa Milani and Walter Molteni. I really liked the geometry and simplicity of this screen print, but it also has texture when you look closely.

There were lots of other amazing artists but I can't write about them all, so I advise that you visit immediately! The exhibition is on until 4th May at Somerset House. 

I realised that I had totally forgotten to mention the marvellous stand that was Ohh Deer! They were extremely nice and let me make a lovely Deer themed greetings card by sticking lots of stuff and scribbles together and then they had a postbox to post it to a friend.

I bought some coasters from them to brighten up my desk.

Glam rock coaster Gemma Correll

Elephant by Sophie Corrigan

Owl screen print - Pink and blue

Following my post on my green and blue Caslon Owl, here is the same owl in a Pink and blue colourway.

This little chap has a body made from characters from the Caslon font, a serif font originally designed by William Caslon in the 1700s, and printed in black.  The rest of him is printed using bright pink and pale blue acrylic inks overprinted to create more colours.

This is a limited edition of 8 prints, some have got leaves around and some havn't.

You can buy now it in my folksy shop; welaughindoors now! Also if you like what you see and would like to be kept up to date with my latest screen printing activities why not become a fan of mine on facebook :) or follow me on Pinterest.

Owl Screen Print - Green and blue

Behold my latest Screen print creation, the Green and Blue Caslon owl, do you think he is cute?

This little chap has a body made from characters from the Caslon font, a serif font originally designed by William Caslon in the 1700s, and printed in black.  The rest of him is printed using bright green and cyan acrylic inks overprinted to create more colours.

This is a limited edition of 9 prints, but there are other colours to come.

You can buy it in my folksy shop; welaughindoors now! Also if you like what you see and would like to be kept up to date with my latest screen printing activities why not become a fan of mine on facebook :)