Explore the wonderful art of woodcut printmaking with printmaker Joanna Bourne, celebrating the colours and shapes of spring flowers through the combination of woodcut and chine collé.
Inspired by your favourite flowers of the season, whether daffodils, tulips, primroses, bluebells or dandelions, you’ll create a vibrant, multi-coloured print using a single block of wood. You’ll also discover chine collé, a technique that introduces delicate, thin papers into your print to add colour, texture and detail to your design.
Throughout the day, Joanna will guide you through the process, from transferring your design onto the wood and using traditional gouges to cut away the areas you want to remain unprinted, to inking and printing your finished image. You’ll experiment with different coloured inks and learn how to incorporate chine collé, using fine papers such as Japanese gampi or tissue to highlight particular elements of your design. The papers are bonded to the heavier printing paper as the image is transferred through the press, becoming an integral part of the finished print.
By the end of the day, you’ll have created a small edition of your own multi-coloured spring flower woodcuts to take home.
You’ll be working on an A5-sized block of wood (15 x 21cm), so please bring an idea or reference image to work from. This could be your own sketch or photograph, or an image of flowers sourced from books, fabrics or other materials.
Suitable for complete beginners as well as those with some printmaking experience.
What to expect
Time at ArtisOn is designed to take you away from it all and provide the environment, the time and the guidance you need to create. You can expect a warm welcome, skilled and friendly tutors plus the chance to meet like-minded people keen to share ideas and experiences. You can even leave us to clear up the mess! There will usually be two workshops going on and we encourage everyone to mingle and be nosey about what the other workshop is up to.
Arrive in time to meet other participants over a cup of tea or coffee and biscuits before beginning your session at the appointed time. There will be a mid-morning break for refreshments and a chance to talk over progress with others. Lunch is usually around 12:45 for about 45 mins – you can expect a homemade 2 course lunch. The main course will be delicious but don’t overdo it as the puds are usually worth waiting for! There will be a further afternoon break with the most wonderful cakes from Roots & Fruits Home Bakery, a North Yorkshire micro-bakery producing handmade bread and cakes. All food and refreshments are included in the price of the workshop.
Finish time is given as a target – there are occasions when the session may overrun so do let us know if you need to be away promptly.
We aim for your day to be a real treat… of course you could always learn a new skill in a shed or a draughty village hall with a curly sandwich, but we want you to have more fun than that! So we make it a day being looked after, with good food, good company and great inspiration!
What you’ll need to bring with you
You will be working on a A5, 15cm x 21cm, block of wood, so please bring ideas or an image of this size to work from. These can be your sketches or photographs, or an image sourced from books, fabrics, or abstract patterns.
