Here at Boundary Way, we love it when artists create work inspired by our site and we feel fortunate to have had so many talented people come and enjoy finding inspiration on the allotment. Printmaker Linda Nevill has been one of the artists finding inspiration in the Boundary Way landscape and a few weeks ago she guided a relaxing day workshop that allowed participants to experiment with printmaking techniques.
The results were stunning and today we are going to share some of the processes we went through to create our Boundary Way prints! !Printing and the sketching taking place in preparation Printing and the sketching taking place in preparation[/caption] The first thing Linda did was to introduce everyone to some of the prints that she had created at Boundary Way and we went on to discuss the different techniques used to create each of them. Inspired, everyone then grabbed a clipboard, pencil & paper and set out to sketch some ideas from the Community Garden surroundings. Everyone came back with completely different original ideas and that is one of the great things about taking inspiration from what you see, everyone sees things differently. !Cutting the Lino Cutting the Lino[/caption] Once we had decided on our final designs, advised by Linda, we then set to work transferring the work onto the lino. When we had our designs and we were happy with them, we all set to work cutting them out with the lino cutting tools. This can be quite a time consuming process but, luckily, it was nice and warm in the polytunnel, which softened up the lino making the it far easier to cut. Linda had also created some brilliant cutting boards to help avoid injuries and everyone had soon got their designs ready for printing. !Howard taking inspiration from the trees Plotholder Howard taking inspiration from the trees[/caption] To print everyone's designs we moved over to the shed, where the inks and equipment had been earlier set up. Each participant was given ink, a roller, an ink tray, a pack of paper and a wooden spoon. Linda did a demonstration of how to achieve the best print from our lino and then off we went! We applied ink to our lino with the rollers, then placed it face up on a marked out piece of paper. We then aligned our printing paper with the marking sheet and pressed in onto the front, inked up face of the lino and this is where the wooden spoons came in. Linda demonstrated how rubbing the back of a wooden spoon onto the design can transfer it evenly. It took a bit of trial and error, but after a few attempts everyone was creating wonderful prints. !Some of the resulting prints, hung up to dry in the shed Some of the resulting prints, hung up to dry in the shed[/caption] A selection of the participants stunning prints were shown at our Heritage Open Day, alongside Linda's work that has also been inspired by allotment. It was great to be able to show the prints in the environment that they were inspired by and we hope to continue to create art with its foundations in the landscape of Boundary Way.
