Sheffield Printmakers print festival and print fair

Just  enjoyed a fantastic event at the Workstation in Sheffield alongside my fellow members of Sheffield Printmakers. A week long exhibition and two day print fair.
Our theme for exhibition was 'Inspired by the written word' and we were asked to create prints reflecting our inspiration.
For me the first time I became 'inspired by words' was at a very young age when my mother, teaching  me to read, spent time reading and sharing fairy tales from the classic collection Old Mother Goose Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes with me.
I chose to revisit the fable of Little Cock Robin declaring his love for Jenny Wren and proposing to marry her, a sad ending comes to him as the story concludes when he is shot through the heart at the wedding by the Sparrow with his bow and arrow. In revisiting these stories the level of tragedy surprised me, but fables and nursery rhymes have so many hidden meaning and uses within society for relating stories of their time as Mary Mary Quite Contrary and Ring O' Ring O' Roses quite clearly show, and have been used to convey messages through society throughout the ages.
As yet I haven't reached the tragic ending for Cock Robin but am still enjoying exploring the characters of the fable within the series of prints I wish to make. Three are already finished and editions competed, they received a good reception at the exhibition too.

 

 

 

 I will wear my brown gown.Collagraph edition/10.

 

 Jennywren.Collagraph edition/7.                              

 

 Little Cock Robin. Collagraph edition/10.          

  

 

 Set up at the print fair.                         

 

Proofing plates whilst it's pea soup outside ....

As the weather has scuppered my plans for a days sketching today, I decided to proof another of the small landscape collagraph plates I have recently made.

I used a combination of intaglio inking and applied wipes and rolls of additional colour to the relief surfaces of the plates.

There are two collagraph plates in the above image- background and foreground over printed whilst still wet. Then relief printed grasses once the prints were semi dry....

This image just utilises the foreground plate with the relief grasses plus some monotype foreground detail applied by hand.....

There are so many connotations from using just one or two plates then adding individual details making the prints more variable and therefore more unique in the edition. 

I was pleased with the proofs and looking forward to working on others in the group of images all in time for Open Up in May.

Hope you like them.