Press for Design blog

You may or may not know that as well as doing lino/soft block/eraser carving I am a freelance graphic designer and illustrator. I don’t often put that work up here as this blog does specialise in the relief printmaking side of things, but there are times when I find I would like to write about my other work as well.

So for that purpose I’ve recently set up the Press for Design blog, where I can talk more about my design and illustration process, and maybe even the ups and downs of being self-employed too. I hope it will be of interest to you.

Hope to see you there, and I’ll be back here with some more relief printing soon

Carrie

Dates for lino printing classes at Beamish Museum

Hi everyone,

The dates for future lino printing classes at Beamish Museum have now been confirmed, they are:

• Saturday 3 August 2013, 10.30am to 3pm – Lino/soft block printing for beginners
• Sunday 1 December 2013, 10.30am to 3pm – Christmas card workshop – make your own Christmas card design and print it up into cards

If you would like to book, details are on the Beamish Museum website, please book through the methods given there. We will be able to have access to the stores of the Beamish Museum collection and you can choose either to work on an image that has inspired you in the stores, or for those of you who would rather not do the drawing yourself, I shall have plenty of inspiration from the museum ready prepared to work with.

You can read all about – and see! – what we got up to on our previous lino printing course at Beamish Museum here.

I look forward to seeing you on a course soon

Carrie

Lino printing class at Beamish Museum – results!

This is how any good workshop should look – full of creativity all over the place!

I had an amazing day teaching lino printing/soft block carving at Beamish Museum on Sunday. There were three lovely ladies on the course, Celyn, Mel and Louise, two of whom had not done any lino printing before, one who had done it last at school.

We were very lucky as Celyn is the Skills Development Officer at Beamish Museum, and so we were able to have access to some inspiration from the vast Beamish stores, consisting of old advertisements and lino designs. We were also lucky enough to have a little tour behind the scenes of the collection too.

We started off the day with a few exercises in order to get used to the carving tools and materials, consisting of creating lines and marks, and then a monogram each.

We then moved on to designing our blocks and transferring them on to the carving material.

Celyn had very kindly shown me round the Beamish collection the other week so I could prepare some designs in advance for workshop participants, and she chose this Nectar Tea sign from the Beamish collection to carve and print.

Mel had come with a design already in mind, and worked on a print of the interior of a cathedral.

Louise chose one of my own designs Trees Along the Wear Valley to carve, and as you will see, she made it her own

When I had a moment or two spare, I worked on this two colour print taken from a design from a wallpaper of one of the houses in Beamish Museum, but obviously I didn’t have much spare time whilst teaching, so I haven’t finished it yet!

And once the designs were chosen and transferred to the carving blocks, the carving process began!

Once the carvings were all finished, then came the play part – printing! We experimented with different colours, background methods, etc., and I think you’ll agree, that everyone came up with the most amazing prints.

Aren’t they amazing? It was a great day, thanks so much to Celyn and Beamish Museum for inviting me to teach there, I had the most fantastic time. We are talking about putting another lino printing workshop at Beamish Museum on on 30 June, so keep that day free if you fancy coming along, and I’ll let you know nearer the time how to book.

Thanks to Mel and Louise for a lovely day, I hope you have enjoyed framing your prints!

Carrie

carving class at Beamish Museum

Exciting news! I will be holding a Lino Printing for Beginners class at Beamish Museum on Sunday 31st March (Easter Sunday).

We will be able to have access to the stores of the Beamish Museum collection (which I took at peek at today, and it is amazing!) and you can choose either to work on an image that has inspired you in the stores, or for those of you who would rather not do the drawing yourself, I shall have plenty of inspiration from the museum ready prepared to work with.

All the details are on the Beamish Museum website. Please book using the details given in the link.

We will be using the soft block lino material that you see me using in my tutorials on this site, so it is easy to work with and gives wonderful results.

Here’s a bit of inspiration found in Beamish Museum that we could use on the day:

Hope to see you there

Quick Draw Tuesday

This morning I just happened to be pootling around Twitter (find me at @pressfordesign) at just the right time to see a tweet from illustrator Lucy Farfort about her Quick Draw Tuesday. I loved the idea of it, so thought I would join in. The three rules are (taken from Lucy’s post):
If you want to take part there are 3 rules:
1. You must draw without any external visual reference, so from mental reference only.
2. You must draw it in a time limit of five minutes.
3. You must draw it in pen straight off. So no drawing in pencil and then tracing over the line.

This week’s word is “stereo”, so I set my timer to 5 minutes, got my pen and a couple of paints out and here’s what happened in 5 minutes:

This is a fun challenge, so I hope to join in as often as I can from now on. Thanks for the challenge, Lucy

Pop on over to Lucy’s blog and check out the other entries when they’re uploaded, and have a go yourself

the design process

Mothers Day Bag

I’ve written a guest blog for one of my fab clients, Life’s a Celebration, in which you can read all about the design process for her Mother’s Day bags. All the details are over on the Life’s a Celebration blog, so I hope you will pop over and take a look

Abstract Ankh Symbol

I had some time during the daylight to finish the last of the symbol series of carvings today, and videoed the carving and printing process:

The SoftCut mentioned in the video was sent to me by Chris of EssDee – thanks, Chris

I decided to go for the ankh symbol as the final one in this series of five – having a lot of thoughts about “life” at the moment, so it seemed appropriate

Abstract Ankh Symbol

And as a reminder, here’s the rest of the series:

Yin and Yang Symbol

Abstract Pentacle

Abstract Peace

Abstract Om

There’s also been plenty of illustration going on recently, I drew these hearts for myself:

And also designed this heart for Life’s a Celebration for their Mother’s Day Bag – it comes with fabric pens and is perfect for children to colour in. Pop over to Life’s a Celebration for more info – I know I’m going to be getting one to colour in for my mum

Mothers Day Bag

What’s next…? Hmmmm, I still have the Hadrian’s Wall carving to do, plus I’m working on an alphabet series… Will pop back when I have some more news

Hope you’re well!
Carrie