Printmaking workshops with Robin and Annie Day

After we left the Sturt Summer School on  Saturday January 11th, we went to Bowral and began a series of printmaking workshops with Robin and Annie Day - the Printmaking Sisters who specialise in non toxic printmaking techniques.

The workshops were held in a large gallery called The Milk Factory. The printmaking workshop took over the main area and we worked while the public wandered around us.

We did three sessions of 2 days each.
The first 2 days were where we learned about waterless lithography.
Instead of using big stones

we used thin aluminium plates to make lithographs. Traditional lithography is incredibly laborious and hard work involving gringing stones and heavy presses. There is an 8 page description here
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/artwork/stone-lithography.htm

The process that Robin and Annie taught us was much quicker and far less laborious.
Here are some of mine

Non toxic etching with the Printmaking Sisters

The second workshop we did with the sisters was Aluminium etching - instead of using traditional noxious etching substances, they showed us how to achieve good effects using non toxic solutions
.
This workshop was a bit more  prone to errors as the etching process itself is more complex.
These are the etchings I did... more or less exploring the different effects that could be obtained.

This one below has line work and tone in the waves

This one below uses 2 plates and chin colle.. pity about the yuk colour ink

 This uses line work and tone and chin colle

 This has several depths of tonal etch

Photopolymer printmaking

The third kind of printmaking we explored with the Printmaking Sisters, Robin and Annie Day, was photopolymer.

Essentially a sensitised plate is exposed to the sun with an image on it... and the UV etches the image onto the plate. Sounds simple... well there is a lot in the process and timing to contend with. The sisters were great in guiding us every step of the way, and I was pleased with these experiments. Again, I was looking at different subjects to see what effects I could get.

 Below, the top image is what was held against the sensitised plate - a combination of drawing and paper stuck onto the translucent paper

And below is a print from the plate that was made

Hume Highway January 2014

The last project

The last project was to draw some old farm equipment that Marianne our teacher had brought into the studio.

This project started on Thursday afternoon and we finished it off on Friday. I chose to use charcoal as I had enjoyed earlier exercises using it. Did a wash on the paper first

I made a concertina book - which is hard to show, but it is over a meter long.

Here is a stitched together view... first time I have used the 'stitch' software.

Below are the details

Sturt Summer school settings

 I have to admit that I was so busy and or tired from all the activities at the summer school at Sturt that I nearly came away with no pictures of the grounds.
The summer school takes place in the grounds of the Frensham school - using some of the facilities of the school as well as those of Sturt.
The grounds are magnificent and the bird life is very noisy. All in all an idyllic setting
 Some of my pics below... and there are more images here
( http://www.frensham.nsw.edu.au/about-tour
Of course the young people in the images on the web site are not there during the summer schools)

Old pottery kilns

Collage work with Marianne Courtenay

The collage that I did in the  From Drawing to Collage Workshop with Marinne Courtenay is here.
I did small drawings and then pasted them onto a larger piece of paper that I had prepared with watercolour and pencil.

We had looked at works by John Wolseley and Jorg Schmeisser for some inspiration

Sturt Summer school 1

Here I am at a summer school in Mittagong at the Sturt Summer school. Now Sturt is NOT a place, it is the name of an art school which operates in Mittagong. More info here
http://www.sturt.nsw.edu.au/about-sturt

We are boarding ... all food and accommodation supplied in very beautiful surrounds.
The course we are doing is From Drawing to Collage with Marianne Courtenay whose wonderful work can be seen here http://www.mariannecourtenay.com/
We have been drawing - quite a challenge for most of the class
An interesting exercise in volume was drawing bottles on black paper using white conte crayon

 We have drawn gourds with charcoal!!!!!

 and hydrangeas using a stick from the garden, and ink ... and a watercolour wash.
Challenging!

Still it has been very good to be challenged an to have some expert guidance