Monoprinting with Glen Skien.

January saw me at Sturt Summer School for 5 days of printmaking.  The program included great live-in accommodation, excellent food and several hundred people all involved in a range of workshops.

Unfortunately I was struck seriously ill a few days before the event and was only able to participate in the last 3 1/2 days – having recovered sufficiently to drive the distance and find some brain power to produce some meaningful work.  So glad I went, despite having missed some of the content.

Super facilities.  A huge classroom for all the planning, cutting, designing, book and box construction and the like.  And plenty of space to lie out prints as they dry.  A separate print press room (how spoiled we were!) with tables around all walls for inking up, cleaning and so on.

Continuing my theme of Linear Containment from late 2017, where I was printing designs based mainly on triangles, I moved to more rectangular shapes and chine collé overlaid with black print.

I missed the entire book construction part of the course (but can do that myself once I have a cover designed and printed) but I managed to make a full set of artist pages.

These will be combined into a book of a type I haven’t made before I but understand the concept.  The design work for the cover and spine is underway and will be produced from collagraph plates over the coming weeks.

I also managed to print a very large piece of Japanese tissue paper, with chine collé inclusions.  This print was then used for the lid and interior of the box I made on the last day, plus the covers of a small concertina book which lives in my box.

Already looking forward to next year.