MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR OFFICE/STUDIO-SPACE!

Last week I promised I'd use my next blog entry to talk about how to make the most out of a studio/ office-room with limited space (and budget). I had to make the recent move from my studio back home, and set about trying to create a good working space within a small single bedroom (which already housed a wardrobe & chest of drawers that couldn't be moved elsewhere).

Desk Area

The first thing to do is to consider what you will use the room for and to work from there. I know that sounds like a very basic requirement, but think about what space you need, and measure and plan and do a bit of research before committing to buy. Forget about what you've seen in magazines, or in furniture stores, the key is to make it work for you and your work. There's no point buying a big desk, only to find that you're mostly working on your laptop and the rest becomes a dumping ground. Storage should be a major consideration - think about what will work, what you need to hand, and what can be put out of reach. For example, I use a sturdy under-bed storage box on top of the wardrobe, as it fits perfectly, but keeps all my postage paraphenalia together and out of the way.

Inking-up desk tidied away

Printing Area

From my own experience, I knew I needed three things: clean desk area for drawing/ carving; area for my press and then an area for inking up. For the messy inking up area I decided to use a 'mobile' option, so I bought a cheap but fairly sturdy fold away table, covering it in PVC for the ink. It literally fits under the desk when not in use, or can be folded away at the end of the desk. As for the desk, I needed a long narrow space to work on and so decided to get storage options underneath the desk. one 'open' area for books and another set of drawers for hiding away inks, rollers, lino blocks and other bits. I think that's the key to making a space work for you. Having everything to hand and easily accessible is really important, but you don't have to look at it all the time. The drawers are perfect for that.

pots of pens etc

The desk is long enough to house my printer at one end; pots of stuff at the other and my guillotine; leg room and a 'desk' area; and space to house the inking table underneath. For the general desk-area, I've used tins of different sizes - great for my pegs and string and pens and pencils. It's a compact space, and I could do with more storage areas / shelves for paper and filing storage, but it works for the time being and until I return to an external studio. The desk (inc. drawers and shelving) was about €100 from Ikea. It is a bit of an investment, but this matched my specific needs. You might be able to grab an online/ live auction bargain - try to buy a desk because it works for you, not because you need a desk (you might not even need a desk at all!)


As I mentioned in my last blog entry, one of the things that works for me is to tidy at the end of the day and get the space ready for the next morning... mine is always this tidy... did I say always... I meant never.

About working from home

The Printing Rooms is now live - great news - have a look: www.theprintingrooms.com. During the period of going live I moved my studio to my spare room and there are definitely pros and cons. I thought I'd make this entry helpful for those of you who are working from home, and share my 'tips' and my moans about it... and, for anyone in the same boat, I would love to hear your secrets for a happy working life from home.

Firstly, the internet. Lovely lovely, helpful, informative, distracting internet. Whole days can be wasted away on the internet, so my tip is to turn it on first thing, check, update, research, and then switch it off - turning computers on and off is a pain, so you're less likely to be drawn to it. (I never stick to this rule...ever, so maybe this wasn't the best tip to start with..).

Tidying your space/desk - now this really does work for me. Even if I have spent a good 14 hour day working in my studio from home (which I have in the run up to the website going live), I will still spend a good chunk of time clearing and tidying my space before I hang up my rollers for the evening. I could easily waste a day cleaning the studio if I let myself, so doing it at the end of a day is a good motivator to get it done quickly and prepare for the next day. It also means there are no excuses the next morning. It's now so ingrained, it's become as much a part of my day as finding ways to avoid doing work!

Managing your time - lists. I have made lists that were entirely impossible to complete, but after a month or so of doing it regularly I now have a good system. At the end of each week, I will write out a list of tasks for the week, but  each evening/morning I will write out a list of tasks for the following/ that day. This way, I know exactly what needs to be done and when - I do switch around and re-write lists, so nothing is set in stone. The daily task list then has more focus on the exact requirements. For example, weekly task list might have: 'finish Heart plate', but the daily list for a Monday might say, 'draw plate, cut plate, test-print plate'. The more you put on the more you can cross off (Is that cheating? I've stopped short of writing 'get up, shower, have breakfast etc'...  only recently). (another good tip is to have a task list for a project, i.e. every single task that needs to be done towards completion, so that you can refer to that so you don't forget anything)

Managing your time, deadlines - Cons, tendency to put too much pressure on yourself. Pros, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week of being able to work at your own pace. Cons, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week to have no excuse not to work. As a home-worker you need to be self-motivated and organised, and you need to set yourself deadlines. The best approach is to be realistic. When I chose a date for the site to go live, it was all systems go, and at times it was touch and go about whether I'd get it done on time. It's often much easier to work towards someone else's deadline. When it's self-imposed it's easier to let yourself down.. so pick a deadline, and stick with it and don't let others talk you out of it.

Office-politics - there is none, hurray!

I'd love to hear any other tips out there. Next week's blog will be about setting up a home-studio with limited space and budget (I could just write it now in one sentence - Went to Ikea!)

OFFICIAL COUNTDOWN TO WEBSITE OPENING

So, a date's been decided on, and it's all systems go. The official date of The Printing Room going live is Friday, 3rd December, so bookmark this page now: http://www.theprintingrooms.com/


Currently, preparing the final plates for printing. There are another 12 editions to print, so it will be touch and go whether there's enough time to get every single edition up on the site, but if not on the 3rd, they'll be there over that weekend. Each edition takes the best part of a day to print, but with the website to finish and the site images to photograph, and the mounts to order, and the postage to sort, and..... well, you get the picture, 8/10 days per week would be good at this stage!


No The Printing Room images this week! I will be keeping you all in suspense for the website opening, and so all editions will be hush-hush from now. Speaking of images, am preparing and buying frames, and will be setting aside a day and a friend pre-site/pre 3rd December to show you how your limited edition print will look framed... fantastic... obviously!!


Today: blogging, carving, cutting, printing, website-making. So much for Sunday being a rest-day. Right, enough of the chat, here's some pictures I've found that have helped the creativity flow this week, enjoy!

SOME INSPIRATIONAL PICS!

part of my current noticeboard!

This week, I'll keep the writing short and show you some images that I have in my studio. I always have a very large notice board in front of my desk which I add to and change every few weeks, sometimes daily if I have lots of images to get through. I use image sources from the internet, magazines, art galleries, books (some great illustrators out there), greeting cards, wallpaper etc. You may notice a common theme... nature and animals... sometimes, when all inspiration is lost, it's nature I turn to... and even when all is won I still turn to nature.

I really love the depth and creativity of 1950's naive pattern. You can really see the influence of screen printing and over-laying in this type of pattern. 

1950s influence, geometric

And the best part is that it was that there were variations that all made sense together. So we had the rough around the edges, over-laying. We had the geometric shapes and we had child-like/simplistic/pared down design... and the start of great cartoons!

It was all a direct influence of the preceding history, and designers and artists really went for it (and musicians, and architects...). 

When you look at anything from the 1950's you really do see the influence of current-day design, especially higher end stuff - just look at some of Tom Dixon's designs - this table is like a modern, even more pared down version of Ercol.

I'll happily finish off with some more images. You'll see the geometric, the child-like/cartoon and some animals pics... Enjoy! and if anyone has any images, similar or otherwise that they find a source of inspiration, then comment away!

1950's influence - geometric shape

1950's cartoon-style

Kool Cats!

Geometric

SOME LINO-PRINTING TECHNIQUES

During Lino Turorial 1 and Lino Tutorial 2 we briefly touched on the types of different carving you can use with lino-cutting. I'm going to expand a little on that in this blog entry and show some examples of the differences you can achieve - these will be the prints you will expect to see for sale on www.theprintingrooms.com once the site is up and running (just a little plug today!).

Firstly, when you draw your image onto the lino, you can either carve that image away, or you can carve around the image. The difference, ultimately is the amount of ink that will be transferred onto the paper once you have reached the inking-up stage. The difference in the final print can be huge, however.

When you carve away the drawing only, you will be leaving a much bigger area of the plate on which to hold the ink, giving a much larger 'background' area - we really favour this approach, as rather then getting caught up in the carving away of a large space, what you can achieve is a really free and energetic drawing. If we take the 'Flamingo' as an example, the outline was drawn onto the lino-plate first, and then we worked back into the plate with smaller amounts of detail - as this wasn't drawn in, it meant that each cut was done in quite an energetic manner, and we think this comes across in the end product. To have the larger ink area in the colour that we mixed also gives quite a nice shock of colour!

Now to focus on the 2nd technique that we have mentioned. For the 'Jungle' Series, we have carved around the image, and so there is a very different quality achieved. The image we have chosen is 'Elephant Stack'. Again, the outlines were drawn onto the lino-plate, but instead of carving the outline, we worked into the background and carved away anything that wasn't drawn on the plate, therefore leaving quite a bit of background on view. It is a much more work-intensive approach, but the end-product defines this. For the 'Jungle' series, we wanted a much more naive approach and look and we think that this was achieved. There are other techniques that can be used for lino, for example it can be etched - Keep watching our blog for new entries!

DAY-TRIP TO IMMA

Took a little trip to IMMA yesterday to see the Graphic Studio 50 years exhibition. As it was all print editions, I was in my element, although did compound my blog entry below, as not one single lino-cut appeared, and even more disappointing, only one woodcut; if  you were new to printmaking you might only think there were 3 techniques. Ah well, it was still an interesting show, some really great pieces. I did almost bankrupt myself and walk away with a piece... thankfully my good friend dragged me away before I had a chance to do anything really silly.

There was also a piece my Norah McGuiness. Lithographs, I have been told will make a grown man cry, and to see this level of detail... jeese, I would almost be tempted to cut off my right hand to be able to do half of what she did... I'd even cut off my right hand to own a piece.

Apart from the Graphic Studio exhibition, we saw The Moderns - some Robert Ballagh Pop Art was ... pop-arty, you know big and bold-more substantial to the American pop-arts; for me it was the Mainie Jellet and Evie Hone paintings on the upper levels that were the stand-outs (can't remember which one is which... one is Mainie Jennett anyway... and the other one is Evie Hone). A lot of Picasso influence in there, but also very religious - you can really tell they were female painters, there's a delicacy that counterbalances the harder cubist elements - me likey! Definitely worth a look, it's just seems there's a lack of energy and cohesion to the place. It would be nice to walk into IMMA and feel like you were going somewhere really special - either they are down-playing the exhibition (why?), or there really is a depression setting in (having said that, I haven't been to IMMA for several years, and my regular visits have been to the Tate Modern)... could this be the start of the downturn effecting the arts... I hope not, and hopefully it's just a short-term blip.

A (VERY) Brief History of Lino Printing

Lino pinting is often seen as the also-ran to woodcuts in the printing world – you don’t see very many artists using the technique. It might have something to do with it’s history… so here goes, a brief history of lino printing:

Early 1900’s, first used in Germany by a group of artists known as Die Brucke, cheap way to produce ‘woodcuts’, more accessible; during the 1st World War it was an easy way to produce anti-propoganda and protest posters/leaflets. So from early on it was seen as an economy product.

Many of us were introduced to it in school, returning home bearing bleeding postulous sores... I was enthusiastic.

I have mentioned before that I love lino, and it’s because of the accessibility,  but also because it is a pleasure to carve and because it is so adaptable. In order to sway the view of lino being an under-dog, I’d like to share with you some of my favourite lino printings, by non-other then Picasso, Matisse and Escher. Firstly Picasso, used lino a lot, and invented a method known as the reduction-print. I won’t bore you with the details, I’ll just show you the nice pictures (both above).

What I love about both Picasso and Matisse is that they used lino-printing to draw with - there's an ease and flow to the carving and image.

Finally, we have Escher, and as usual, we have a mathematically complex image (one that you have probably seen reproduced many times) – it’s incredible how prefectly all three have carved the lino plate… my hands are sore just looking at them.

Enjoy the pics, and if anyone has any favourites, lino or otherwise I’d love to hear it!

LINO TUTORIAL - STAGE 2

Right, so we've got all our materials, and we've made our image, and we've cut our image. The next step is to ink up your plate and to print your plate/image. Following on from Stage 1, step 1-3, what we need now is:

• the cut plate
• ink
• inking-up plate
• roller (or brush etc)
• paper/fabric surface to print on
• .. and the newspaper/old shirt to avoid tears and 'vanish' sessions

LINO CUTTING TUTORIAL, STAGE 2

Step 4

Take your inking-up plate (this could be the piece of glass/ acrylic/ thick acetate) and spread a small amount of ink on the area. You will now take your roller and roll out your ink, making sure there are no large 'blobby' bits - you are just looking for an even surface of ink on the roller.

Step 5

Place your lino plate on the newspaper/ brown paper and roll your roller over the plate, making sure you have even coverage of colour... believe it or not, rolling the ink on the inking-up area and on the plate takes a lot or practise, and there are specialist techniques used to get a professional print finish, but for now, just make sure you have even cover.

Step 6

Now for the exciting bit, the transferring of the image - place your inked-up plate centrally on a piece of paper the same size as you will print. Take the paper that you are printing onto, and line it up at one edge, carefully lower onto the plate, and smooth over quickly but lightly. 

Step 7

Take your baren/wooden spoon and place even coverage and pressure (quite a lot) onto the back of the page. 

Step 8

You can lift the edges up to see if it has printed well enough. Don't worry if your first go is quite faint - just ink up again and try again.

TIPS:

1. Clean clean clean.... that's one of the things about printmaking - you tend to have to be very clean (if not tidy) and fairly organised.
2. You can warm the plate before you start cutting to make it easier to cut into - I actually use a hot water bottle, but you could leave it in the sun/ on a radiator, or iron on the back of the lino.
3. Be REALLY careful with the lino tools - they are bloody sharp and because you are using a certain amount of pressure, it can sometimes, shoot into your hand - avoid that, it is sore. Don't let your kid go crazy or even near the tools... I will upload some child-friendly printing techniques in the future.
4. Sometimes a very faint print, or an 'incomplete' print can have a much nicer effect.

LINO TUTORIAL - STAGE 1

LINO TUTORIAL - STAGE 1

So I've been promising for a while that I would post up information on lino-cutting and printing, so here goes:

LINO CUTTING TUTORIAL, STAGE 1

Right, first things first, lino printing is a process called relief printmaking - basically, whatever you take (i.e. cut) away from the plate will not print on the paper/fabric/surface - in other words, the bits that are cut away, or the negative space will be the colour of the paper/fabric used, and anything left in 'relief' on the plate will hold the ink.

Materials needed:

• a roller (you could use a brush just to start you off)
• printing inks (you could also use poster paints, acrylic paints but they will dry very quickly, so it might be best to invest in one printing ink to see if it's for you)
• your printing plate - lino 
• Lino cutting tools
• an image/ drawing
• printing press (ha! bloody expensive too, so just use a wooden spoon for now, or a japanese hand baren)
• inking-up plate - somewhere to spread the ink, so a piece of glass (don't need to tell you to be careful!), acetate, acrylic.

Most of the above you can get for relatively cheap in any art shop, but for anything you can't get or can't afford, just improvise! Apart from the above, you'll need: Newspaper (it's messy) ; Apron/ old shirt.. anything to avoid messy ink splatters on your best clothes, and finally, printing paper (you could use copy paper to test) or fabric to print on.

Step 1:

You can either draw onto the plate directly with pencil or pen, or trace onto the plate using carbon paper - to do the carbon paper method, place the carbon paper ink side down onto the plate, place your drawing/image on top and draw over. NOTE: whatever image you put on your plate will come out as a mirror image, so you've been warned with words/ letters etc.

Step 2:

You have a plate with an image on it, so now you are ready to cut - you can either cut away everything around the image, or you can cut the actual drawing itself - experiment with this; both give very different effects. To keep it simple, we've just cut away the image/drawing.

Step 3:

Once you have cut away the lino that you want removed (what you want to remain 'paper colour') then you are ready to ink up.... which will follow in tutorial step 2... hopefully tomorrow!

LINO TUTORIAL - STAGE 2 

Welcome to the Printing Rooms!

Ok, so it's taken a little bit longer to get my ass in gear and start blogging information on the Printing Rooms, but better late then never!

First a little bit of information about the Printing Rooms: I wanted to create a business where customers could purchase limited edition works of art at a reasonable price - why? I have a degree in Art which I'm afraid has languished since graduating from college in 2003, and when I lost my latest job (long line of office-based blah blah) I decided now was the time to take the... printing press by the horns and start my own thing.  In fact, all the years of office work (some good, some baaaad have left me in a really good position to get cracking on this).

In a nutshell, I love printing - love the smell, the process, the inks, the lino, the paper - and I love interior design, and I want my business to work by offering products at a price that people will come back for and products that they want to have on their walls, so that I can continue to make. I love art but it can get a little 'heavy' at times. It's been nice to take a step back from that side of art to make stuff that I like, that I want to look at and to see on my walls.

Fine art printmaking shouldn't be confused with giclee prints etc - fine art printmaking is a much more specialised and creative craft: you are designing and carving a 'plate', inking up that plate, and then creating an edition of prints based on that plate - all handmade, carved and inked. Each edition of prints may take upwards of 1-2 weeks to create, from the idea, the plan, testing the plan, the transfer of the image, the carving, the testing, the re-carving, the inking etc etc; and each print from an edition is an original art work. It's a labour of love, people!!

So currently I am in the process of creating, carving and inking upwards of 20 different prints; and in the meantime I am putting together a website, so, all going to plan, my prints should be ready to sell.... soon... hopefully pre-Christmas, hopefully beginning of November, but more like mid-end November.

Keep an eye on the blog, as I will be posting up tutorials and information on printing.