Card designs

Square designs with words

The original card design with 4 linocut images has proved very popular and has sold well. However shops and some galleries aren't interested unless they can sell sets. So here are some ideas for wording with 2 different sizes of type but arranged slightly differently. The advantage of this is that the existing images can be printed without resizing or re shaping them as cards in the shops are gradually getting bigger.

Adana letterpress

Adan Five-Three

We recently aquired this small printing press on e bay to demonstrate how letterpress worked as part of the project Lucy is doing with the town heritage initiative and the history of printing in Aberdare.

We want to use it to make some invitation cards for the exhibition in the museum in February. As we have run out of time to buy suitable typefaces I made up some words out of lino which I set in the chase at the same height as the type. Its a great little machine and is ideal for invitation cards, business cards and greetings cards.

Aberdare Printing continued

Poster Ideas

 

One idea for the poster for the exhibition of printing in Aberdare is to use the masthead type faces as a form of typographic art. Here are some of the proofs hanging up to dry.

Aberdare Printing History

Linocut mast-heads and block type

 

Alongside the actual refurbishment of some of the buildings in Aberdare town centre, the Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI), partly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), is celebrating the culture of the town through raising awareness of its history. One such area is the rich printing heritage of Aberdare especially in the mid to late nineteenth century. This was a time of great change not only in the developing technologies of the industrial revolution but also in the areas of religion,  politics and  social structures. Aberdare newspapers played an important role in this change as their readership included much of south and mid Wales.

As part of the THI programme, Lucy is working with a class in a local primary school to develop an art led project based around printmaking promoting Aberdare's printing heritage. I am supporting her by producing a number of educational aids including copies of old newspaper mastheads (made from lino) and large block type. The idea of the type is to show how letterpress was compiled before the days of computers, although these letters are also large enough to be used as stampers.

Once the work with the childeren is completed it will form part of an exhibition at Cynon Valley Museum in half term week.

Crickhowell Castle

Crickhowell Castle Linocut

This image has been brewing in my mind for some time as the castle is very visible when you drive down the hill into the town. I did a collage of it for the exhibition at Neville Hall and this is a sketch based on that collage.

This is a 2 colour reduction linocut and measures about 3"x 5", in an edition of 5.

New collage Whitecastle

Whitecastle

Again created as a result of studying the original sketch, but trying to avoid the overall greyness of the building.

New collages

Skenfrith Castle

I visited Skenfrith for the first time this week, and came upon the castle early in the evening with its long contrasting shadows. I sketched in situ with pen and paper and then worked up this image the next day. The process is quite a long one, first preparing a background on canvas in acrylic and then identifying the shapes that caught my eye. Then coloured swatches are selected and re arranged continually to achieve some kind of harmony and balance
I am doing this and other collage paintings to show next week in Neville Hall hospital out patients department. .