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
Print Your Own Letterpress Cards
Ahrabella Prints wedding cards for Ruth & Pedro
Ruth & Pedro wedding cards printed by Ahrabella
Using a combination of metal type
Ahrabella exploring metal type
Exploring different coloured card stock
Ahrabella printing her cards on the adana 8 x 5 printing press
Congratulations
Ruth & Pedro
And thank you Ahrabella for your energy and enthusiasm throughout the whole process. It was a joy to work with you.
Wedding cards by Ahrabella
create your own unique cards
Treat yourself to a creative play day
print on the Adana 8 x 5 printing press
Book Your letterpress workshop
Linocut Prints by Corrine, Morgan, Dave & Sally
A wonderful morning sharing the studio with Corrine, Morgan, Dave and Sally. They produced some fab prints. Exploring different types of lino first to get a feel for the linocut tools, they then found images for inspiration and were completely absorbed in the process of carving and printing. Thanks to all for bringing lots of enthusiasm and laughter too!
