Month: May 2020

Swansea Printmakers workshop

well well, it’s been a while since I’ve found the time to write a new blog entry. Now’s a good time, during lockdown to get to all those jobs that ‘I’ve been meaning to do’. 2019 was a very hectic year, 2020 on the other hand is quite the contrast.

I thought I’d feature an entry on the workshop I ran down in Wales last year with members of Swansea print workshop. With every workshop I change it up a bit, and this time I chose the theme of birds. The director of the workshop came up with the genius idea of working with the Swansea museum, to draw on location to draw birds from their taxidermy section.

some of the birds we had the privilege of drawing.

It sounds a bit dark, and it was a little strange to see stuffed birds but we were reassured that they died of natural causes. We drew lots and lots. I drew lots and lots too. It was super fun. We indulged on fresh welsh cakes for afternoon tea.

this chap was my favourite although I was convinced the eyes were a little out of alignment !
we had a range of drawing materials to use, but focused on black only as this will transfer best into the screenprint process.
these images show drawings onto paper as well as photocopies onto tracing paper.
it was a challenge to draw birds looking lively, rather than stuffed specimens
We then took the drawings into the screenprint process and made mini prints of them.

The screenprints were printed onto somerset paper 6″x4″ in size. I made up a series of mini prints from my drawings when I returned to Edinburgh Printmakers workshop in view to participating alongside members from Swansea Print Workshop in an exhibition in collaboration with Swansea Museum.

These are some of the mini prints I made from the drawings at the workshop. They are all different, some have painting and collage in them also.
I can’t tell you how much fun it was to create every single one of these lovely mini prints.

There is a selection of mini bird prints available on my website in the British Bird section of the gallery. Each print is named after a member of my very extensive family.. and as I feared, there’s more family members than I have in bird prints!

No this name and address isn’t real, it just gives you an idea of the care and attention I put into the packaging 🙂

Mini prints are £25 each including worldwide postage and packaging.