The Making Ape

“All of your ancestors were creative — You and I and everybody we know were descended from tens of thousands of years of makers. The entire world, for better or for worse, has been altered by the human hand, by human beings doing this weird and irrational thing that only we do, amongst all our peers in the animal world, which is to waste our time making things that nobody needs, making things a little more beautiful than they have to be, altering things, changing things, building things, composing things, shaping things. This is what we do. We’re the making ape. And no one is left out of the inheritance of that — that’s our shared human inheritance.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert with Krista Tippett (onbeing.org)

Over the last few weeks I have been working with some fab spirited teens at a community centre in Salisbury. For the latest linocut workshop I brought along some celebrities. Ed Sheeran and Camilla Cabeo were the favourites. The teens got stuck in and made some brilliant prints. Here’s a snapshot of their hard work!

Ed Sheeran and Teen Team Spirit

Team effort is involved in the creation of Ed Sheeran. Together they carve and roll out the ink while one holds the paper the other prints. A wonderful collaborative process. 

An Independent Camila Cabeo 

A very focused and reflective individual enjoys the independence of carving and printing Camila Cabeo by herself. 

Support from The Rock

 The Rock created with an abundance of animated energy shows in these boldly carved lines.

The Greatest Showman

Celebrities pop art pics are left to one side for she already has something in mind. 

Usually to print text from a lino block, the text needs to be carved back-to-front. This way the text will print the right way round. But today a different approach is needed in order for a thoughtful teen to give the actual lino as a gift to a friend. She carves the words directly into the lino the right way round and inks up the lino to reveal the carved letters. The ink is left on the lino to dry.

Thank you to all the teens for your openess to explore printmaking and your commitment and effort throughout the whole process.

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Eightfivepress delivers rubber-stamp, linocut and letterpress printing workshops. 

If you would like to book Mog for a printmaking workshop at your community centre or school please click on the link below. 

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

South Bank Arts Trail - free printing demos @ El Rincon Spanish Bar

Eightfivepress printing demos

Discover the wonderful world of traditional letterpress printing

As part of the Southbank Arts Trail, Bristol I’ll be heading over to El Rincon Spanish Bar with my adana 8 x 5.  I’ll be giving free demos on how to set type on the 1950’s table top printing press and there'll be some printed goodies to take away on the day! : ))

"PRINT, v.t. to impress, to imprint; to mark by pressure; to fix deeply, as in the memory; to stamp with coloured patterns. v.i. to practice the art of typography; to prepare and publish a book. n.a. mark made by impression; printed letters; the impression of types; a printed fabric, an engraving. n. Print’er." from Rapid Printing Made Easy - a Handbook for Users of the New Adana High Speed Printing Machine.

Saturday 14th May 12-4pm

El Rincon Spanish Bar

298 North Street

Bristol

BS3 1JU

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