Stone Lithography Printmaking

January 13, 2016 Matt Bannister

In an effort to help the artistic brain cells keep growing, I enrolled on a stone lithography printmaking course at The City Lit, near Covent Garden. Taking inspiration from a photo I'd snapped underneath a flyover near Croydon, I'm pretty pleased with my first piece, entitled 'A23'.

We were the first class of its kind to run at the City Lit, and our tutor for each of the three weekly sessions was artist and printmaker Simon Burder. He guided us through the alchemy of the process, and with a lot of help and enthusiasm from him, I managed to create something quite loose and expressive compared with my normal illustrations.

Here are some photos that Simon took during the final day (featuring me!). These were posted on the City Lit Printmaking Facebook page.

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My first output using stone lithography. #lithography #stonelithography #croydon #urban #printmaking #citylit #architecture #ikea #concrete #a23 #art #southlondon #london #stonelitho
A photo posted by Matt Bannister (@bannister_images) on Dec 9, 2015 at 10:55am PST

More of my explorations into the world of printmaking can be found here.

Linocut Life Drawing

December 11, 2013 Matt Bannister

Several weeks ago, I bought a guide to linocut printmaking. I really enjoyed the two day course I'd done earlier in the summer, and wanted something to refer to whilst I had a go at home. The lovely people of the Twittersphere helped me out when I asked for recommendations. @TinkersHill suggested I found a copy of 'Learning Linocut' by Susan Yeates, and although I haven't read it all, yet, it's really simple and nicely laid out. I had to get stuck in, though, and used a recent life drawing (from my Crystal Palace class) for inspiration.

Linocut Printmaking in London, SE1

August 27, 2013 Matt Bannister

The Search for the Missing Dragon (linocut)

I'd always fancied trying my hand at linocut printmaking, so having dabbled with screenprinting earlier in the year, I thought I'd give it a go. The bold marks you can get seem to fit well with my current style of work (all those tasty black outlines!). I enrolled on a 3-day course across a weekend (so pretty intense having the time all in one go). The course took place at The Art Academy, off Borough High Street, London SE1, and the small group of us was tutored by Nick Morley (inspiring and with a nice dry sense of humour).

Printing in mono

July 16, 2013 Matt Bannister

I've been trying out some monoprinting at home, to see what results it might produce.

Monoprint. Blue printing ink (diluted, neat and wiped). Printed on damp 220 gsm paper.

This is what I did:

Monoprinting basically involves painting (with water soluble printing inks) on a water resistant surface (I've used glass).
I placed a printout of a photo of mine (taken in Borough, London SE1) underneath the glass, to give me something to paint over as inspiration.
Using either: neat ink, slightly diluted ink, ink that I scratch into, or ink that I apply then wipe off - I created my image.
I then place either a dry piece of paper onto the inked glass (or a piece that's been soaking for a few minutes in water but with any surface water wiped off before printing).
With a small roller (normally used for linocut printing) you give the back of the paper a few good rolls.
Carefully lift up the paper and voila! Your print.
Monoprinting is so called, because each print is unique, a one off. You can try to get two or three prints from one 'inking' but they will each look significantly different to your first (but still interesting if you're lucky).

Peckham Printing

May 28, 2013 Matt Bannister

I thought I'd learn something new, and broaden my creative knowledge, so I signed up for a one day introduction to screen printing, last week. I did a little bit of etching at uni but no printmaking since then. Hugh at Peckham Print Studio showed me everything from start to finish. As I happened to be the only one learning on that day, it ended up being one-to-one tuition, which was nice.

I'd never done it before, so I think my first efforts are pretty good. It was lovely to get back into an atmospheric environment (and away from the mac keyboard). Inks, tinny mp3 speakers, mugs of tea, grubby overalls: you get the picture. I really enjoyed it and would to have another go soon (before my 'skills' wear off!). Here are 2 prints I did, plus a detail from an experiment I did that was deliberately off-register (just to see). The picture of me comes from the studio's Instagram feed: peckhamprintstudio.