Well misconception is a bit harsh.. But I will delve into my memory bank of things said to me at art fairs purely to share some of my processes. No reprimands here.
Here we go..
"Where do you get your designs?"
This was nice as I started to imagine my print designs were so good that people thought they weren't made by human hand. I can dream anyway.
So all my screen prints begin with a pen drawing, a biro in fact. With time and patience I usually get a good drawing which I then screen print.
I am lucky that I don't usually run out of ideas, if anything they are all waiting patiently at the back of my mind. Making me forget things, like materials I need for teaching, why I entered that room, what day is it? Anyway I keep retrieving them from there, lucky to have these things.
My most recent print!
Do you do this for a living?
Yes is the short answer. Yes and I do a bit of teaching is the long one. It all feels part of the same picture anyway. Teaching usually takes me out of my comfort zone in terms of the styles and the materials I use. I feel I have grown from it in many ways.
Watercolour..which I learnt so I could teach it and now love.
Are these digital prints?
Currently the only things I sell in my drawing based range that are digitally printed are my notebooks. The reason I get the notebooks outsourced was they were becoming a labour of love rather than a viable product. I hand printed (often three separate colours) and hand stitched them myself. This made them too expensive if I wanted to even slightly get paid for the labour involved! So I now get them printed on recycled card and paper.I am relieved and pleased at how good they look. They had a lot to live up to after all.
Everything else is hand printed. If you would like to see me hand screen printing look here! This shows the fun bit of the process (the actual printing) but there is a lot of planning and prepping before hand.
Lately my other thoughts on digital was to get my black and white preparatory drawings for my hand pulled prints, printed. This seems to make sense in that it shows the beginnings of the artwork but will be a new, more accessible range. What do you think?
So that is three, the magic number or me running out of steam.Feel free to ask me anything about my artwork to start me on another post, it doesn't have to be a misconception either... Thanks for reading.
