printmaking

special edition news!

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If you follow me or Design for Today on social media you will have seen updates of the book we have collaborated on celebrating artist / designer Edward Bawden’s love of gardening. The book is titled ‘Gardening with Mr Bawden’. It’s been the perfect project for me as I also love gardening, have a background in making artists books and also love lino-printing.

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I’ve designed the book taking inspiration from some of the research I’ve found about Bawden, such as his preference for structural plants, his competitive growing of sunflowers, and the ongoing problems with snails. I’ve also made reference to some of the artwork made by Bawden and his dear friend Eric Ravilious, including the view under the tree with the table and tea things, as well as the bench Bawden designed.

All the motifs are my own but I’ve made reference to the sort of patterns Bawden was designing while living at Brick House, Great Bardfield in Essex. I’ve blended the idea of plants growing in the greenhouse, becoming wallpapers in the house. There is a pull-out greenhouse!

There are limited edition sets available to pre-order now which includes a signed book with four greetings cards and a collectors book explaining the project. Click here to order.

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garden cuttings

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I’ve been working away in the studio on a wonderful project with Joe Pearson of publishing company Design for Today for a while and time has come for us to begin to share the results. It is a book inspired by Edward Bawden and his love of gardening. The content of the book has been informed by my research into his garden at Brick House, Great Bardfield in Essex. Bawden was a very keen gardener and I have researched and worked with anecdotes and visual references to build a picture of what his garden may well have been like and designed the artwork of the fold book with lino prints, a process he used many, many times.

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Keep an eye on social media for more updates as we lead up to the official launch in May.

limited edition prints from posters

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Following the success of my four posters for London Transport Museum, currently on the network of London underground stations, I have been asked by Michael, the commissioner, to edition the designs as screen prints. I jumped at the opportunity, and embraced the task!

This has been an interesting challenge because although the artwork for the posters was made using paper cutouts, one great joy of digital print production means you don’t have to separate each colour to print; CMYK does it’s thing. However, screen printing requires far more consideration of separate colour on each of the layers as well as registration – the accuracy of each colour layer when printing. Overprinting can result in muddy colours if not fully considered. For the editions of prints I made some artwork adjustments on Adobe Illustrator enabling me to create the positive artwork for each of the four colours in each print, ready to expose photographically on the screens. You can see in my composite image, top right, the black print on acetates which are the screen positives, that I used to expose the images.

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I love mixing colours to match my references and I take pride in not using colours straight from the pot, but to always see the nuance of hues. I make colours darker using purples and greens, rarely black. I used the final posters to get the right colours, and daylight is always essential. Ink and paper surfaces always give different qualities to contend with too. The final colours are certainly rather bright! Screen printing on paper is also very different to screen printing on fabric, so you have to get your head around the differences including remembering to flood your screen (pulling a layer of ink across) between each print, and using the vacuum on the print bed (to hold the paper firm).

However tired I am, when I am printing I am absorbed in the process – rarely noticing hours passing, and missing the need to feed. This is a good thing as my week as been ridiculously busy on all sides. Printing requires systematic thinking, and at least one clean hand. Preparing screens, mixing colours and registering each colour on the acetate first all needs to be organised. I love it when I’m in the rhythm of editioning.

A deadline to hand the first print from each edition to the commissioner this weekend focused the mind, and when trimmed, signed and wrapped I was really proud of the prints. I was even more pleased when I met up with Michael to give them to him. He appeared to be joyfully moved by the results – holding one print up to the fellow coffee drinkers in pride… phew! They are off to be framed and auctioned at a London Transport Museum event at the Victoria and Albert Museum later this week.

This whole project has taken so many months (years) to come good, but throughout the process I have felt trusted by Michael to do what I do best. He has great confidence in his choice of designers spanning the years, and allows us to get on with the job without interfering with the outcome. His twenty plus years of commissioning poster designers has led him to influence the direction of graphic artwork on London underground, creating the archive for the future through the choice of creative hands and minds, but not by telling the designers what to do. It takes trust and judgement on his part, but in turn I think I’ve created my best work yet. In the many conversations over these years I’ve had with Michael he listens, he wants to hear my opinion on things; we have good discussions – he knows about a lot of things. He also often gets carried away with future ideas and possibilities – I like that, we should all get excited by ideas. Thanks Michael!

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patterns: printed or not

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My go-to process is print, therefore the majority of my commercial projects have included print outcomes, whether that is a commissioned limited edition print, wallpaper or my patterns available on Formica’s laminate. I design as a printer; thinking of layers of colour / texture / pattern, that build in stages.

I knew early on that paint brushes are not really my friends, not unless they have to be, not compared to a print roller. When I was introduced to printing I vividly remember learning mono-printing in particular. I fell in love with the excitement of the hidden surface. I love the detachment, the indirect nature of printmaking, whether it be a lino block or litho plate, they offer a space away from the actual mark making that creates the image.

I’ve been spending the last few weeks writing lots of words with my academic hat on about my design practice in relation to my teaching practice, and this has made me think about how I learn, as well as how I teach. My design practice experience is so integrated in my teaching practice, they work so well together. I can be in a business meeting learning about an industrial print consideration I didn’t know about for a specific product and immediately I’m thinking of how I can feed that knowledge in to a module on the BA programme I lead. In my mind it makes perfect sense for academics to be practitioners too, albeit with lots of juggling!

I love to learn, whether a process, a way to see in order to draw, or a new context to place work, I am excited about finding things out. It was this mindset that got me making rugs, to challenge my skills, and to test myself with another process that works with pattern, but with very different thinking. There has been much written about the need to play, but as designers it is so important that we take time to explore, to develop our thinking. This keeps ideas moving, and the sense of creativity at the forefront. I’m also fascinated how my patterns work across surfaces / materials, requiring consideration of colour matching, scale of motifs, line weight etc. and this expertise is learned as I work with manufacturers of different materials and products, and visit trade shows across the design sectors. Don’t get me started on brands that just print their patterns on every surface that sits still for long enough… my students hear this rant often enough!

I shall continue to explore, learn, design and teach… just after I’ve finished writing this next batch of academic words…

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Images from my ‘Threads’ collection (L-R:) Latch-hook rug, original lino print: Twill, and the same design on window film from The Window Film Company.

drawing grass lines

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I’ve written many times over the years on this blog about the themes that underpin my work, the approaches I take to develop new work, and the things that inspire me. Here I look again at the process of evolving ideas and visual language, to introduce my latest series of prints.

As I develop ideas, often in series of works on paper before any design solutions are considered, I explore the visual language of the subject through drawings, photography and printmaking. The aesthetic nature of the new work evolves and is tested in relation to compositions and rhythms. My knowledge of pattern design, in particular in relation to textiles, feeds this investigation. The motifs, the linking forms, the negative and positive shapes and the quality of line can suggest relationships with historical styles, international influence and contemporary trends. As a designer I use this knowledge to sometimes avoid, and sometimes align to this language, communicating a context far beyond the printed paper I create.

On a cycling and camping tour around Denmark back in 2004 we came across a small book shelf in the campsite shelter containing a range of books. I can’t read Danish. We picked out a few, judging them purely on the graphic design of the spine, and I found a science book of beautiful diagrams of plant structures. I have a photograph somewhere, but the impression those diagrams made on me does not require me to see that page again. I remember the look of those diagrams, and they have fed in to this collection many years from then.

Mid C20th pattern is also something I am interested in, and for this new body of work, particularly the development of stylised florals and diagrammatic interpretation of plants. Lucienne Day was particularly expert at creating designs in that manner, with simple black lines, herself inspired by Miro, Kandinsky and Klee. This is why it’s important to be aware of what has gone before. Not to imitate the past, but to take courage from previous developments in drawing, stylising and pattern making, so we don’t recreate the past, but so we push forward with our own journeys, liberated by not inventing the wheel. I was amused to discover the current exhibition at the brilliant Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester is Lucienne Day: A sense of Growth – it seemed uncanny!

My photograph collection, both in print and digital form, contains many pictures of reeds; Danish reeds, Norfolk reeds, anywhere else reeds. I also have many records of grasses, and have always been attracted to the structure of such plants. These are often the unloved weeds that may be irrelevant and overlooked by many, but I come back from walks with handfuls of lines, some with seed heads, some without, but always lines of grass, as if nature had fun drawing them. Different stems, leaves and weights of line, and some suggesting very distinct natural habitats. I’ve always been more interested in line quality than texture, and my work over the last two decades demonstrates that very clearly.

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So that was a long-winded way of saying that this new series of works has been a long time coming, but makes perfect sense to me. I didn’t set out to create drawings of grasses, in fact I started screen printing flowers, but this evolved as part of the create process that is play. Colour came and went too, so as not to detract from the lines. There are some similarities with my threads printed editions and I have had the prints next to each other today – I think they make an interesting dialogue. This is the journey of idea development, by mixing drawing, thinking, printing, reflecting, contextualising, and doing it all again. By the way, this bit of the creative process is one that is very difficult to teach design students, more so with less and less studio time, and a full to bursting curriculum, but knowing your own creative process is halfway to success in my world. Take risks (it’s not rocket science we say) and work at playing.

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I digress. These few prints are only the start of this series, I already have new work evolving, but other projects are jostling for my time in the studio, so for now, I introduce you to Grasslines… and now you know a bit about how they came to be.

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threads of an idea

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It’s perfectly normal for me to begin a project by looking back at work I have made but not quite resolved. I keep sketchbooks of ideas and samples of constructions that will never see the light of day but somewhere among the pages there will be inklings of ideas that appear to connect and weave in to something right for now.

I wanted to get back to printing so I took the opportunity to explore a number of processes, including mono printing and lino printing to explore line qualities I’d sampled before, and soon I was back on the idea of woven yarns, linking my construct collection launched in 2015. This was a collection inspired by woven cloth, with drawings using hand-made tools dipped in ink that were used to create a series of repeating patterns I went on to collaborate with Formica with. I wanted to challenge the abundance of ‘faux’ material surfaces on the market, digitally printed wood-effect pattern, for example. Ideas were still left open…

Running in parallel to this has been a long term paper project I have been toying with since about 2002; paper constructions that explore the depth of space beyond the page, a sculpture, but also a book. The build series grew to explore woven space of over and under. You can see some of the pieces below.

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I see the threads collection as an extension to construct, but is equally quite able to stand on it’s own. I have produced several editions of prints and paper constructions that led to where I have come and I enjoyed printing in Payne’s Grey to not be distracted by colour.  All of a sudden I’m working with clear, colourless window film – it all makes sense. I am delighted to have worked with The Window Film Company to develop the patterns for windows. They have been an amazing company to work with. Cheerful, prompt, generous and supportive in all aspects of working with the team – a big thanks to you guys!

I was also pleased to return to laminate and Formica to enable bespoke production and am delighted with the results. I’m enjoying working on designs for harder surfaces but I still can’t help but sample other materials, so the collection I shall show at London Design Festival includes a new rug sample, screen printed cloth, and hand-made notebooks featuring patterns from the collection as well as vinyl and laminate.
If you are visiting London Design Festival I hope you will come and say hello at Tent at London Design Fair. Hall T1 stand G18

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pattern prints

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I’ve been working behind the scenes, offline at least, making new prints, mainly lino prints, and developing repeat patterns with them. I’ve not wanted to show the progress until I’ve worked out where I’m going with them, but finally I’ve decided to go public, in a small way, revealing one of the new prints, hinting at the direction my new patterns are going in…

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I’m exhibiting at TentLondon again in September so between now and then I’ll show more on instagram, Twitter, Facebook and here on my blog.

print progress

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Recently I have been really busy with a variety of academic duties in Birmingham and further afield, taking me away from studio time, my freelance design practice, and of course blog writing. Also, in my teaching of Textile Design at Birmingham City University I have been leading a module of professional practice, assisting the students in learning about the life of a freelance designer. It’s definitely a double-edged sword, as the discussions between students and staff illustrated: It’s great to be your own boss, but you take all the blame when things don’t work out! You can get up when you want, but nobody pays you for just waking up!

The rhythm of freelance work is varied. Somehow it’s often the way of things that several deadlines coincide, and when you have a schedule to stick to, an urgent press request comes in. On the day you have time to make calls, those people are out of the office, and obviously you don’t get paid when you take a holiday. Yes there can be tough times, but I really like the variety of the weeks’ activities that freelancing gives me, certainly set in tandem with the academic life of very different demands. Each practice informs the other. Obviously there are freelance tasks I prefer and other ones I procrastinate over, lists are created, social media is checked and Radio 4 is listened too!

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With so much to-ing and fro-ing on trains this last month or two and with several commercial projects on slow-cook I decided to give myself time to make, test and resolve some ideas that I have been exploring, with paper and print. The activity of printmaking is a fabulous discipline to work with. I love the excitement of planning a new print, and composing the plate, often taking me back to sketchbooks and previous ideas. The physical process of cutting the block can also be absorbing, and therapeutic and I have to decide the paper stock, the ink colour, and edition size too. It is important to maintain an experimental, inquiring practice and my prints and drawings are the evidence of ideas that have sustained my creative practice for the last twenty years. Between the commercial constraints of projects shaped by clients, costs and repeat patterns, printmaking can seem so free from limitations. This is why I make sure I keep printing – the creative sort, not just the invoices!

both prints featured here are available to buy, at £46 each unframed.

Knit 1, edition of 15, lino print, 9.5 x 9.5 cm print size

Meadow Grass, edition of 12, lino print, 9.5 x 9.5 cm print size

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teaching for them and for us

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I’ve combined my academic career with my art and design practice since the late 1990s and I’ve felt that each informs the other. Some weeks I’ve wished there were more hours for one than the other, but the two occupations are, for me, valuable and complementary to each other.

My art and design practice is one of learning, journeying and discovering new ways to look, to draw, to interpret the world about me in a visual, drawn or printed language. I feel as if I’m on a really long adventure that won’t stop until I get put in a box. Each commission, or self-established project offers a small experience that builds the bigger lesson that takes me further along that creative path to who knows where. Facilitating the discovery of this excitement in creative exploration is what drives me to teach students in Higher Education.

I have recently visited the excellent Peter Green exhibition: Sixty years of printmaking, at Mascalls Gallery, Kent (the exhibition has just finished I’m afraid), which got me thinking…  It was made clear in the design and content of the show (St. Judes and Emma Mason Gallery with Mascalls Gallery) that Peter combined his printmaking career with an academic one, and a high achieving one at that.

Printmaking is such a physical experience, and although simple in principle, the intricacies of a process and resulting prints can be hard earned. The exhibition of Peter Green’s work really demonstrated the pleasure of investigation, of material, colour and surface quality, not as passing ideas, but as a sustained dialogue between practitioner and process, and between ink and paper. The exhibition showed the drawings, the printing plates, the tools, the sampling and final resolutions. Peter’s vast experience and significant creative journey was evident; and through the exhibition I felt as if he is teaching us to learn from him, not for the technique, but for the commitment and value of doing and pursuing something. I believe that this is fundamental in teaching, whether in formal education or not.

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It was interesting to read in the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition that he said, “knowledge is about common ownership […] we should learn from each other.” This is how I feel about my relationship with education. We should not be masters to preach the skills and experience, but instead we could share in the experience of learning together. That’s not to deny that someone needs the skills and experience in the first place, but the attitude of someone like Peter who clearly enjoys the creative journey will inspire those a step or two behind him. I think it’s important that those who teach are also those who do.

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I strongly believe that there are no short cuts, or right answers along the path of art and design. There is no ‘one’ way of doing things. Sadly, so many students come through school thinking they are looking for the tick in the box, the correct result. We try at degree level study to nurture in them the understanding that you learn far more by investigating, questioning and journeying, rather than heading straight for one destination. This is again echoed in Peter’s investigative approach to printmaking – the finding out along the way is as important as the final state.

I read in the catalogue that Peter had moved away from wood engraving as a process as it required a more calculated journey and pre-determined images. I think I work like this too, looking to uncover the solution rather than to execute the obvious, not with wood but as a designer. This makes me think of new or less experienced teachers over-planning and worrying about the outcome of a session; what the students will achieve at the end, as a tangible result. Those with more experience and confidence in their teaching and the learning experience can take risks with that journey of learning and therefore participate rather than dictate. This sounds comparative to Peter’s more recent prints that evolve over time without the planning, but with an open-ended investigation. The exhibition celebrates sixty years of Peter printmaking [today in collaboration with wife Linda], so with such a busy and extensive journey the prints are an exciting archive of process and investigation, with common themes, colour relationships and familiar motifs in evidence during this time, as well as textile designs more recently in collaboration with St. Judes.

No doubt those of us who live with creative practices do so for many reasons, and those of us who teach will each tell of reasons why we do too. The combination of a creative practice and a teaching role is, in my mind, a really good combination, a two-sided relationship, where hopefully the give and the take work themselves out for the benefit of all! Thanks to Peter for reminding me of that good partnership as we embark on another academic year…

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Thanks to Simon Lewin of St. Judes for permission and access to the images of Peter Green’s prints:

top: Welsh Landscape No.1 1960

middle: Red Night 1963

bottom: Evening Estuary 2013

Useful links:

http://www.mascallsgallery.org

http://www.stjudesprints.co.uk

http://www.emmamason.co.uk