Hats, prints and a print exhibition

Earlier this month, I visited the newly opened bus interchange in the heart of the town. The bus interchange can be accessed on foot from the main A6 and also a new pathway and bridge not far from the railway station.

Rooftop garden at Stockport Bus Exchange

There’s an oval roof top wall walk way with a tree lined garden and observation deck overlooking the Mersey.

My first impressions of the bus station were good and I liked the roof top garden which is called ‘Viaduct Park’.

Following on from the bus station, I arrived at the newly refurnished Hatworks museum to host a meetup event with my local history meetup group call ‘History Get Together’.

The museum explores the international connection with the hat industry. We were lucky to have a tour of the museum and witness the hat making machinery in motion. There’s a gallery of hats on the second floor.

From the 1st to 30th June, the Derby Print Open 2024 will be displaying artwork by printmakers from around the UK. The exhibition organised by Green Door Printmaking Studios is dedicated to original hand pulled prints and I am thrilled to have 3 of my etching prints in this year’s exhibition.

The exhibition is like an art trail with a small number of local venues which are all nearby one another around the town of Derby.

A few weeks ago, I attended an experimental 1-day screen printing workshop organised by Green Door Printmaking Studios.

I decided to use a subject from my printmaking project which I had covered previously as a drypoint. I decided to use a photo of St Thomas’s hospital buildings as the basis of my screen print. The idea was to combined a photographic image, a loose outline sketch of the building, an old map of the town some background sky. I combined these elements to form a colourful illustrative set of unique prints.

Photo of myself at Green Door Printmaking Studios in Derby

The results were impressive and I intend to do more prints in this way.

Next month: Mezzotint printmaking.

Map of Stockport

Over the weekend, I took part in a large drypoint print workshop with a small group of artist/printmakers.

My objective was to create a large map in drypoint depicting landmarks of Stockport. I had never printed anything larger than about a3 size in print form before and my last large print was a drypoint of the viaduct using a metal plate. This time around, the printing plate would be flexible plastic sheeting which was 75 cm x 55 cm in size.

I decided on the idea of a map sometime ago and knowing that a 2-day large printmaking workshop was going ahead, I ensured I booked a place as soon as I got the notice.

I began by prepping the map by creating a printed template in reverse that I had sourced a day before the workshop. I used a combination of Photoshop Elements and PowerPoint to tile the large map and print off sections onto manageable a4 paper prints so I could tape them together afterwards.

On Saturday, day 1 of the workshop, I added reversed text and images of landmarks which I etched into the plate using etching tools from roulettes to diamond point tools to get different textures and patterns.

I placed the template I had created underneath the plastic printing plate while I etched the design onto the plastic.

The process took me approximately 9 hours to prepare the plate (1.5 days). I had to carefully placed where all the text and images of the landmarks would go.

Finally, on day 2, I could ink up and print my plate with the assistant of my friend Alan Birch, using a large etching press which we had hired out for the day from an artist studio down the road in Waterfoot, Rossendale called ‘Valley Studios’ only a few minutes travel from Prospect Studios.

I created an artist proof print (AP) using cartridge paper and then managed to print off my first good print on Fabriano paper.

I reckon there are another seven prints I could produce from the plate before it wears out.

The process was long and challenging but the results were very pleasing indeed and well worth the time taken.

Here are some photos taken of the printed map.