Bookbinding, and Cheltenham open studios

May 8, 2023 | Alison Sloggett

Only a mere 3 years since I have last added something to this site(!) Woops. But I have good reason, I have had a baby and now a toddler , who is keeping me busy.

Time is precious, precious time spent with him is not wasted , but it means time for making things and being creative for personal things is in short supply. My focus has shifted away slightly from printmaking more towards bookbinding/ bookmaking as these are easier to pick and put down quickly.

So there is not many new prints to show you but lots of books!

These are some pics of my ready made mini concertinas. which are a palm sized 8 x 6 cm .

These are fun to do as they each are unique as I use paper marbling scraps or misprints or just decorative paper I find in my drawers.

Range of book sizes that I make in my blank concertinas

The big thing I am doing this year in terms of my personal work is taking part in Cheltenham Open studios.

https://cheltenhamopenstudios.org.uk/

Since a few weeks before having my baby we built a log cabin studio in the garden, which is my workspace.

Adana 5 x 8 and some notebook covers I have printed.

This is what I will be opening up to the public to come and have a look around, perhaps pick up some bargains direct from me and have a look at what I do. I also hope to have some equipment set up so visitors could have a go at printing as well!

Any way just wanted to update any passers by to this website about what’s going on around here.

Thanks

So much to see in your garden!

November 29, 2020 | Alison Sloggett

I was gifted a wildlife camera in the autumn of this year. We suspected we had hedghogs, ( kept seeeing poop) but getting the wildlife camera, plonking it down on the patio, and then waiting, we had no idea!

October they were soo busy every night we had at least two Hedghogs visiting and we started feeding them so they would visit more. The pictures can sometimes be out of focus or the animal barely on screen, but it a magical view of your garden as you cant see it, because you being there they wouldn’t do the things they do on the camera.

Any way , November has pretty much been and gone, and I wanted to do something with all the lovely bits of film we have, so I have made a compilation video on youtube with the best bits.

Its not fast paced, but lovely views of things living.

A few days ago we had a surprise visitor on there as well. A grey wagtail , which I have never seen in the garden before. We have gotten a close up view of it with this camera, as its quite skittish.

New process video about making drypoints.

September 20, 2020 | Alison Sloggett

I made a couple of drypoints this year of lockdowns as you need very little to do them , main thing is a press, and I am lucky to have a little table top one at home.

As with all printmaking processes the small details of how you do them differ between people and their preferred ways of working, so this is how I tend to do it 🙂

The one of many project on instagram is a great thing, and must have raised quite a bit of money for charity by now.

As always thank you for visiting and reading and watching! Have a lovely day 🙂

Siskin Linoprint, hopefully one of many.

June 3, 2020 | Alison Sloggett

I have started a new ongoing project to print my favourite birds from the UK ( possibly elsewhere) in detailed linocuts.

I wanted to challenge myself with this project, so it is technically challenging as I am also printing them as multi block prints. Which means tight registration from separate blocks of lino carved to make the other layers of colour. In this case, yellow, green and the background for example. Something which I have not done before to such a high level of accuracy, and it took a long time to get right on this first print!

As I said though it is a learning experience for me as well as the chance to make some hopefully beautiful prints. They are for sale on my Etsy site, PrintPaintDrawMake and I will be donating a portion of the price of the sale of these to my local wildlife animal charity.

I have started my next lino cut in this series and was thinking that due to lock down I would get loads done, but actually I have not made much progress on it. I have noticed that my work is in fits and starts, sometimes due to time commitments elsewhere, as I have been working from home during this time. But projects like this can’t be pushed, I find I need to be in the right frame of mind, otherwise risk ruining it.

Thanks for reading, stay safe.

Printmaking in the garden with a home made press!

September 28, 2019September 27, 2019 | Alison Sloggett

Pasta press prints

Pasta press monoprint

I have posted a new video on my YouTube channel. I finally finished putting my pasta machine press together and thought I would try out printing from plants with it, and why not do it in the garden as it is a very mobile press!

So please check it out if interested.(Link below) I think the pasta press works remarkably well for soft thin items, like you would mono print with. The idea to mount it on its side came from Snake artist who has great fun art videos on you tube.

Monoprinting with a pasta machine

Cheers!

New work !

August 6, 2019 | Alison Sloggett

New reduction Lino , finally finished

This print I started back in spring, based on flowers that were my nan’s, though she has passed away a few years ago now. I find plants and nature very comforting for their demonstration of life and death and life again. This was about 5 layers and 7 or 8 different colours ( I lost count) and I am happy with the final result , the vibrant pink colour and the shape of the leaves were the main things I wanted to showcase in this print.

Some of the photos from the printing process….

The final print is just a bit smaller than A3, entirely printed by hand at home, using my trusty spoon. I used traditional grey lino and oil based inks.

It is an edition of 6 variable prints ( the last layer I changed the colours for some of them) and if you really like it you can find it on my etsy shop.

Also available to see it in the flesh at Painswick Artburst event , from the 17th of august!

New Items on my Etsy shop

February 27, 2019June 8, 2019 | Alison Sloggett

Printed from wood blocks , in a colour overlay. available at printpaintdrawmake on Etsy.

Just added some new items to my Etsy shop , but now I`m off to do some work in the garden !

search PrintPaintDrawMake on etsy or follow the link .

Cmyk hay!

February 19, 2019February 19, 2019 | Alison Sloggett

This Saturday, the 23rd of February, at Hay on Wye, in Herefordshire I will be taking my work to this brand new print and illustration fair.

Great for a day out, Hay is full of amazing second hand book stores and cafes. At the globe in hay , you will find lots of illustration and print fun, with lots of chances to pick up some art straight from the artists.

Would be great if you came and said hi!

Its been a while! Kitchen Litho 3 colour print.

April 30, 2018April 30, 2018 | Alison Sloggett

I didn’t realise it had been so long since I have blogged on here. I think I have been distracted but for good reasons, I have a new job at the Hereford college of arts, and have been doing a lot of printmaking, so all good !

(Must admit Instagram has also been a distraction! )

Here was my design, it is a sketch of my orchid that I have managed to keep alive ( and its flowered again!!)

Anyway, on my sketch I added registration marks in the corners after watching the creator of this process Emilie Aizier video https://youtu.be/IyRmvt7jgpU on YouTube on making a greeting card with two colours.

The next step was to trace my design onto my tin foil, firstly I just drew through the tracing paper and then I went over those lines with soft 8B pencil.

I made three plates, the first one was the pink of the flowers the second plate to be the green of the leaves and the third plate was all the outlines. All traced from the one drawing so hopefully they would all line up .

This is a picture of the green plate, I used an oil pastel to block out the wide leaves and you can see the mark of the graphite pencil I used to draw the stem.

and here is the green plate inked up. I kept the oil pastel that I drew the leaves with, quite thin so I wouldn’t have to clean off the oil pastel before inking it up . It inked up ok, it was quite heavy and did not have as much detail as if I had cleaned off the oil pastel maybe, but it worked …

I printed the pink of the flowers first, it being the lightest colour. I used my little table top press ( which I have posted a video on YouTube about ) but you could print by hand just with a spoon,it’s easier if the paper is damp.

This is the plate after printing the final layer ,which are outlines, and you can see that because I didn’t wait for the print layers to dry between printing it’s has offset the ink onto the plate.

I thought this would be more of an issue but this time I left it awhile in the cola and it made it much more resilient to ink sticking to it. If you have left it long enough in the cola it does clean off quite easily between inking up. I think this was potentially where I was going wrong on my previous attempts not letting it react enough with the cola.

And there we go ! The final print… And I soon realized that I should think ahead, that because of the registration system I should have left a much bigger margin around the drawing and paper so you can trim it down and get rid of the registration marks…