I have been busy, but not blogging, for some long time now, so this is an attempt to catch up, and get back into the habit. I'm writing this on my i-pad, in the hope that this will be a better way for me to blog more frequently. Hopefully it will be easier to load photos etc this way too.
My MA course at UWE is into its ninth week now, and we have been busy with a succession of print workshops, designed to give us a basic introduction to the main types of printing, the studio equipment and practices, and to settle in to the group and the course. Workshops have been provided in screenprinting, relief print and monotypes, etching, lithography, enamelling, textile printing, photoshop, and bookbinding and letterpress. These last two I have not signed up for as I did week-long workshops in both subjects at UWE during July 2011. The idea was that we would have one or two images to use in each of the workshops, but in practice I found this difficult, as to begin with I had no particular images in mind, and no idea about how the various unfamiliar print options would work - e.g. would lithographs work best with a simple line drawing, or something more complex with variations of tone or texture? Plus, to begin with, I was very shy about my ability to produce decent drawn images, and found it hard to concentrate, or to plan in advance. As the weeks have passed, these problems have become less acute, and I am generally better-prepared. Where I have been less happy with the images, or the resulting prints, I have plans to go back and do some more work to fill the gaps, and to repeat and therefore consolidate my knowledge of the various processes.
The workshops have been led by the print studio technicians, who have been unfailingly calm, patient, informative and supportive. They have made it easy to ask questions and have offered guidance at all stages. In most cases the print studios are freely available to MA Print students every Thursday, and bookable on other days of the week. So for me, living only about a mile from college, it is theoretically possible for me to go back and do extra printing sessions whenever I can fit them in.
Our first formal assessment day is 13th December, and from now until then we have no set workshops, so can use the time to do our own work, filling in gaps and extneding our practice in some or all areas. In addition, some processes are things I can do at home, eg lino and monotype prints, or preparing images for etching, litho or screen printing on site.
As well as studio workshops, each Thursday afternoon ends with a group session, for an hour or so, which has mainly been filled with a series of short presentations from each of us about our work so far, and what has brough us to the MA Print course. Ther are 22 of us, and our backgrounds could not be more varied, both in terms of previous work and study experience, and teh kind of work we have done. Some people have been very engrossed in print-making, of varous kinds, and brought impressive portfolios of prints. Others have come farily recently from fine art, drawing or painting degrees,with a range of work from installation and scultpure through to photography and illustration. We were all slightly nervous about these sessions, the reluctance to put ourselves in teh spotlight, woudl our work look convincing, etc, etc. But in practice each person's work was impressive and original, and people had such interesting artistic journeys to disclose. The sessions have ehlped us ond as a group, too. It is a good bunch of people, with ages rangn from early 20s to 60+, 6 men and 16 women, and there is a friendly atmosphere with people eating together at lunchtime, and taking a realinterst in each other's work. I have high hopes that this is going to be a very creative three years, no doubt challenging too, but in a group of agreeable people and a very optimistic sense of excitement and expectation.
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