Whilst You Were Away

Just a quick one from me. I don't seem to be doing very well at this blog malarkey but never mind. Whilst you were away, here's what you missed;

                                         
Success at the Autumn Fayre! People met, prints sold, money made, fun had.

                                   

                     
Grand day out to the Saatchi and Tate Gallery in London. *featuring a cheeky little selfie of me and mate, well why not aye!* 

                               

A journey in wood engraving for my Art GCSE project "Ordinary and Extraordinary" for which I got an A* to anyone remotely interested.

     
     

And if that wasn't enough, I had my TEN HOUR GCSE mock exam on the theme "Order and Disorder" *This piece was an A1 illustration of Alice in Wonderland which got me a lovely full marks!*

                                     

And finally, an addition to The Printshed. Brand new from Hawthorn Printmakers in York. I could talk for hours about it but I'll cut to the chase - it's my pride and joy.

So that's what you missed. Hopefully I'll be posting again soon but for now I better get back to work!

   

Bye

Will 

Pressing Matters

Right, yet again procrastination has gotten the better of me and I have not posted in some time *I bow my head in shame, I really do* but here I am with a lot to talk about most important of which - my sixteenth birthday ahem. I received some lovely, grand spanking new printing gear to play with so when I have the time I will write a tutorial on making prints if you´re interested! Anyway, something also that is important is that I have printed my newest wood engraving! For anyone who doesn´t know what one of those are, its a very detailed form of relief printmaking that involves patiently carving into a block of wood to create an image. I designed this print during August whilst on holiday:

                 

Then over a period of four/five weeks, on a piece of Lemonwood, kindly donated to me from Chris Daunt, I carved my design bit by bit. Of course I got to that stage, part way through, where I thought "Why did I even start this", I am renowned for making things difficult but I managed to force my way through. Here´s a little feed, a journey if you like, from beginning to end *excuse the bad photo quality*

                 

                 

                 

                 

                                   

I was able to proof the print on some Japanese Kozo to see how it printed before printing the edition.

Now printing: - Whilst designing this print, I bumped into Geri Waddington on Twitter, Geri is an amazing wood engraver... you should seriously look her up and admire her fantastic work!! She is the secretary and soon to become the chairman of The Society of Wood Engravers... I know right!...Impressive.

Anyway, Geri kindly offered me the chance to go visit her and use her relief press to print the edition. She showed me the two mighty fine presses she owns and got me to use all sorts of papers to print on - you´ll be surprised at how much of a difference it makes. Here are some photos I took through out the day:

                                 

                                  

                   

Geri also handed me some lovely endgrains of what turned out to be Boxwood!! I handed them over to my dad who resurfaced them to a fine polish. I´m sure that I will use them soon... thank you Geri for such a productive day!!

                      

                 

                 

So here we have.... "Bedtime", an edition of 25 printed on quality Arches 88. This will be available from my Etsy store in the next few days. It will also be available, along with all my other prints at the Stour Valley Community School Autumn Fayre next Friday 14th. I will be there carving my next print so come and visit!

                             

Bye y'all

Will