Printmaking.
I’m having a slow kind of day and don’t know what to do with myself. My painting is going nowhere fast and yet I need to do something. The colours don’t blend properly and the paint doesn’t end up where I want it to be on the paper in front of me. Everyone else seems really into their work and not up for talking. I don’t want to disturb them, but I don’t want to carry on doing what I’m doing.
I wander downstairs to the printmaking studio. My tutor is always an inspiration and if anyone else is having problems I advise them to come down here. It’s not my time to be in here but my tutor smiles and says hello. I sit and tell him that I’m stuck and don’t know what to do, all I’ve got is a book of photos of the landscape near my friend’s parent’s house in the Yorkshire dales.
My tutor hands me a screen and talks me through a technique whereby printing inks are put on the screen quite haphazardly and then pulled through onto paper with a squeegee. I like the sound of this and at a loss for anything else to do, I immediately take up the idea.
About two hours later I lay my prints out on a table so that I can overview my work. My painting tutor enters the studio and looks over the prints. “I wish you could get this freedom and fluidity into your painting,”he says. I do too.
Back in the painting studio I roll out some paper and pin it to a board, about five feet long and three feet wide. I squeeze out some paints onto a palette and take a big brush. These are going to be the biggest, loosest landscapes I’ve ever created.
Before I go, Stu I checked out that enigin PLC design website that you recommended and it was totally helpful on my last paper, thanks again!