Printing presses

I made the press I've been using back in 2011, I think. I made it to use as a nipping press for bookbinding repairs. It's made from various bits of scrap wood and a manual car jack that was dumped at the end of our drive.

When I started printing it made sense to give it a try. The artists I'd come across used etching presses for relief printing (the sort of press that works like an old-school mangle), but I liked the idea of a platen press. Something Gutenberg would recognise. Anyhow, my rough-and-ready press worked quite well.

As with all these things, I made various tweaks as I went along, and stored some ideas away for the “next one”.

So the “next one” ended up being this. The wood is mostly bits of hardwood door and other bits of furniture I'd sort of inherited. I finished just before Christmas.

Improvements include:

1. A sliding bed with side rails to guide it in and out. 

2. A heavy plate with an iron core faced with mdf. This is smaller than the bed so I don't end up printing too close to the edge of the paper.

3. A hydraulic jack, so easier on the arms. The 2 trampoline springs raise the plate when the valve is released. I'm especially pleased with this. I was considering making the press “upside down” with the plate raising to the bed and lowering again under gravity. But that had issues regarding loading paper and registration.

The whole thing is bigger. The new plate is about 40cm x 50cm compared to 30cm x 40 cm on the old one. The bed is around about A2 size, while the bed on the old one is the same size as the plate.

I've still got to make some kind of tympan and registration guide for the blocks, but I'm pretty much ready to go.

Christmas Cards

We bought some of those make-your-own card blanks and envelopes earlier in the year at a reduced price. So that pretty much decided I'd be printing our Christmas cards this year. My feeling was I'd have to come up with something suitably Goth, but still Christmas.

Seeing as I've lived most of my life in and around Coventry, and with City of Culture coming up in 2021, it didn't take me that long to think of the Coventry Carol. It reminds us that there are other children in this story, and it didn't end well for them. Makes me proud of Cov to come up with something so dark and so world class.

Anyway, here's my effort:

The black is lino, but I used a piece of plank for the blue, scrubbed with a wire brush to heighten the grain. First of all I printed it without any cutting of the plank, and played around with the paper copy, cutting out bits to work out how much of the plank I needed to cut away.

Here's another picture of printing in progress with completed cards hanging up to dry. That's home-made printing press number 1 in the corner. Number 2 is coming soon. Just watch this space.

Rugby Open 19 (23 Nov 2019- 11 Jan 2020)

In mid-October, my wife came home from town with a card advertising for submissions to this annual art exhibition. So I decided to give it a go. My first thought was to submit Wolf in a Sheepskin – it was the standard I felt I had to aim for, anyway.

I was booked on a linocut workshop with Eric Gaskell at the beginning of November. Eric is a formidable printmaker and I attend a weekly art class he leads, so I knew I'd learn a lot. This is the print that emerged. The starting point was a few still-life drawings I had done at the other class. The skull, by the way, is a replica belonging to my son.

As I worked on the print, this Ernst Barlach/Kathe Kollwitz vibe emerged that I wasn't expecting when I started out. I was so pleased with it I thought I'd give it a name and enter it for the exhibition. (It's called “Still Life with wine Glass”.

My wife was away that weekend and I was on a roll, so I carried on over the next day or so to create another image. This one inspired by another Feline and Strange song that had been haunting me. Medusa is a song of rape survival and victim blaming. So the image is Medusa haunted by the frozen faces of those who hate her, always reminding her, even when she closes her eyes.

This one is a woodcut. It's different to lino in that it is inclined to fight back, and the act of creating the image requires more... violence. Which seems appropriate somehow.

Anyway, I decided both were better than Wolf, so I submitted both. A panel of 4 people, who change each year, decide which entrants should go into the exhibition. So I felt having 2 relatively different images increased the chance of at least one being chosen.

So I was delighted to get an email confirming that Medusa had been chosen. But when I turned up to collect the rejected print, it turned out that Still Life had been accepted and Medusa rejected. Administrative error. The plague of working life even affects art galleries. Just so you know.

Still delighted, though.

A bit of a catch-up 2: Wolf in a sheepskin

Those of you that know me will know that I am a big fan of the Berlin-based band Feline and Strange. Such a big fan I'm willing to put my hand in my pocket and support them through Patreon.

One of their songs, “How much” from the album OUT begins,

“A wolf in a sheepskin has to eat grass,

To avoid his detection he walks on broken glass.”

It's a song about being an outsider, trying to fit into a world where they are feared and reviled. And how Death sometimes seems close at hand, weighing our good deeds against the bad....

Anyway, I made this print, primarily for the band, to welcome them back from the States,where they were recording their next album. It's a fairly literal take on the opening lines, but I think conveys that even in the skin of a sheep, there are unwritten rules of being a sheep he just doesn't get...

A bit of a catch-up 1: Titi von Tranz

The last few years in August I've been going to the Phoenix Alternative Festival at Llanfyllin Workhouse in Wales. One of the regular artists was Danielle Miller, performing as Titi von Tranz, singing 1930s Cabaret songs mostly. A kind and generous artist, loved by audience and fellow performers alike.

She died suddenly in July, which was a great shock to everyone.

On the day of her funeral I sat at home and began to draw. The end result was this linocut print.

The design incorporates 2 of Titi's songs. On the left is Tiddles, "My Girl's Pussy" and on the right is "My little green cactus" on the balcony.

I gave copies to friends of mine and Dani's at the festival and their reactions encouraged me to continue.

Change of Direction

Rather than leave this to gather dust, from here begins my log of art stuff. Previous to this post you will find stuff linked to my previous work life in educational technology and research. Nerdy. I wouldn't bother going there.

Edfutures Wiki

Over the last month (mid-Aug to mid-Sept 2012) I've been working on the Edfutures wiki, finding stuff, writing summaries, and doing some "meta-analyses" in the areas of:

• Mobile loan schemes
• 1:1 computing
• Bring your own device (BYOD)
• Bring your owntechnology (BYOT)
• Cloud computing
• Responsible use policies
• Digital leaders programmes

It's been quite an enjoyable project, producing some "base-line" content for the wiki. Be interesting to see how it develops in the coming weeks and months.