The Fish Tale Exchange

Linocut Workshop with Vic Harrison

Vic came to the workshop with a bag full of beautiful sketches she made at the Eden project and Bristol Zoo last year. After perusing and discussing the sketches, Vic chose her fish sketch with soft curves and minimal texture so she could focus on carving a simple shape.

Carving fish

After testing out mark making on different lino Vic prefers carving her fish on this battleship grey linoleum. The 'easy to carve’ Softcut is not as forgiving and although it’s soft and smooth like cutting through butter there's more potential for the tool to slip. Vic becomes comfortable with holding the tools and takes her time carving the lino until a fish appears in relief.  

Printing fish

Vic uses a combination of a wooden spoon and a disc baren to print her fish in plum black letterpress ink.

Inky black fish on blue yellow and orange

Hanging the fish prints up to dry.

Thanks Vic for your incredible energy. You dived right in and discovered a wonderful shoal of fish on your journey! : ))

About Vic

Vic Harrison is well known for her creative community art projects around Bristol. With her recent project BUOYBLE she organised a team of crocheters to create a giant woolly bauble for the dockside. They covered the buoy in 1400 crochets hexagons.

You may have heard of the story about The Bristol Crocodile spotted in the River Avon a few years ago. Last year a life size woolly version was created by Vic as part of her Briswool project (a giant woolly version of Bristol.) She was also selected as one of the Shaun in the City artists. Vic covered her Shaun The Sheep sculpture in thousands of bits of freestyle crochet. 

Vic is currently running CROCHET and THREAD courses at Crafting the City ( A Community Interest Company delivering a range of community arts projects and a course programme of arts and craft workshops). Alongside these, she is also running The Seagull Project.

A Beautiful Flock Of Woolly Seagulls

"This project will create a huge flock of gulls to reside around the dockside in a variety of venues. They will be herring gulls, black headed gulls and lesser black backed gulls. I am currently designing several models and will then go on to create patterns. The gulls will be able to be decorated by their makers and names will be chosen by those who fund them. Makers will receive a special stripy bird pattern designed by me as a thank you for helping.” Vic Harrison - Crafting The City

You can also follow Vic’s projects on Facebook and Instagram

Rubber Stamp Printing at Salt Cafe

With Mother’s Day around the corner this workshop is the ideal space to create a lovely, unique and personalised hand crafted gift.

This will be the last printing workshop at the lovely Salt Cafe which sadly will be closing this spring 2018. Take this opportunity to enjoy Alan and Alice's beautiful light and airy space and create your own hand carved rubber stamp and hand printed mini journal.

What You Get

An introductory workshop for anyone wanting to have a go at rubber-stamping and hands-on printing. The opportunity to make time and space to create your very own personalised hand carved stamp and hand stamped mini journal. 

Play

The workshop is suitable for total beginners. This will be your space to explore and experiment with mark-making and rubber-stamp cut images (hand-carved by you) in the light and airy space at Salt Cafe. With an emphasis on your own creativity, come and play and print on 100% recycled card and paper. Take home your own hand stamped and hand stitched mini printed journal. 

All materials included.

Cost

£30 per person

Tea & Cake!

A complimentary £5 off Salt Cafe's delicious range of tea and cake will be included as part of this workshop. Yum Yum! : ))

Date

Tuesday 6th March 2018

9.30am - 12pm

Linocut Workshop - March Hare

Tea and Oranges

Lovely workshop this morning exploring ideas for Julie's linocut. Very fitting that Julie chose a hare for this month of March! Our Mad Hatter's tea party included a healthier option of fresh fruit with plenty of cups of tea. 

Julie brought her inspiration into fruition, producing a lovely chocolate brown hare, by mixing vermilion, cobalt and orange relief printing ink.

For more details about linocut workshops click here

Rubber Stamp Printing at Salt Cafe

Rubber Stamp Printing at Salt Cafe

New workshop coming up at Salt Cafe!

Tuesday 28th February 2017

9am - 12pm

£35 per person

Half Day Rubber Stamp Taster Workshop with Mog Fry of eightfivepress

what you get

An introductory workshop for anyone wanting to have a go at rubber-stamping and hands-on printing. The opportunity to make time and space to create your very own personalised cards and prints.

play

The workshop is suitable for total beginners. This will be your space to explore and experiment with mark-making and rubber-stamp cut images (hand-carved by you) in the light and airy space at Salt Cafe. With an emphasis on your own creativity, come and play and print on 100% recycled card and paper.

All materials included.

Tea & Cake!

A complimentary £5 off Salt Cafe's delicious range of tea and cake will be included as part of this workshop. Yum Yum! : ))

Book your space via Paypal button below.

Salt Café Deli

01173292970
mail@saltcafebristol.co.uk
120 St. George’s Rd, Bristol, BS1 5UJ

Workshop Terms

If you are under the age of 16 you may attend with a parent or guardian. Both of you will require a valid workshop booking and be present at the workshop.

Refunds And Cancellations

All workshops are non-refundable with the exception of cancellation on part of the workshop facilitator. Not showing up to a workshop means you forfeit your money and will not be eligible for a refund or change to a future workshop date. Rebooking is only available as an exception in emergency situations. A rebooking fee will be required.

Netsuke - Wood Bird II

Re-carving the wood bird

Today I make sure to take my time and carve closer to the original lines of the bird sketch.

Inking up the wood bird

The L shape sits up next to the woodblock to line up the paper. Paul Furneaux had given me some little markers to use for registration which I tape onto the wood. I place mine completely the opposite way round and slanting on the block and feel the frown of the ukiyo-e printers. But for me it's perfect as I want to bird to be at a slight angle and didn't accommodate for this in the initial carving.

Printing the wood bird

The slanted markers on a separate L Shape enable me to change the position of the printed bird. This experiment might go against the tradition of the ukiyo-e printers but exploring different methods of registration became quite common among the Sōsaku-hanga artists during the Creative Print movement.

“Many artists - Munakata, Morozumi, Kidokoro, Maki, Sasajima, to name a few - do not use registration per se because they work with monochrome prints, or they print all the colours at once, or they use colouring techniques such as resist dying after the basic monochrome image has been printed. For them it is only necessary to center the image on the paper - though the use of kentō still survives, contemporary Japanese print artists have steadily been developing their own individual approaches to to meet their particular needs. ”

— Evolving Techniques in Japanese Woodblock Prints by Gaston Petit

“The technique...in modern prints became creative rather than technical.
”

— Japanese print-making: A handbook of traditional & modern techniques - Toshi Yoshida & Rei Yuki

“Sōsaku-hanga (創作版画 “creative prints”?) was an art movement in early 20th-century Japan. It stressed the artist as the sole creator motivated by a desire for self-expression, and advocated principles of art that is “self-drawn” (自画 jiga), “self-carved” (自刻 jikoku) and “self-printed” (自刷 jizuri). As opposed to the shin-hanga (“new prints”) movement that maintained the traditional ukiyo-e collaborative system where the artist, carver, printer, and publisher engaged in division of labor, creative print artists distinguished themselves as artists creating art for art’s sake. ”

— Wikipedia - Sōsaku-hanga