Printmaking, the beginning

The last half of my PBI session was about printmaking. The instructor was Matt Liddle and he spent a lot of time the first couple days demonstrating a million different techniques and showing us samples and all that good stuff. Here he is, showing us one of his pieces, which is a reduction wood cut. He has the final wood block there as well as one of the finished prints.


I had never done anything like this before and was a bit concerned about that lack of experience as I think all the other people in the class had at least a bit of exposure to it. But of course, there was nothing to be concerned about! We started by making some rubber stamps - Matt does some amazing things with his rubber stamps, creating extensive and detailed landscapes and graphic stories, often in book format. My stamps were really simple, but it was a great way to get quick results on my first day of printmaking class!


And apparently printers used to make themselves hats from a sheet of newspaper...so we made ourselves some printer's hats and stamped them using our new rubber stamps. Mine is on the left, the right shows a few of the other paper hat designs and stamps made by others in the class.


And, AshvilleBookGirl was in my printmaking class too! It was great to meet you Clara, and so glad we had a class together!