A few pictures I took

Haven't been out with my camera for far too long but here's some photos I took a while back

Daniel Pudles

Daniel Pudles is an illustrator who uses wood cuts to produce pieces which often accompany stories in the Guardian, where I first saw his work. Beautiful.

We Make London Christmas market

I've been chosen to have a stall at the We Make London Christmas Fair which will be taken place on 10 December at the Battersea Arts Centre in Lavender Hill. I have heard some really good things about this market and judging by the stalls they had at the Thames Festival, its going to amazing. Check out the other stall holders here and if you're in London on that date you should definitely pay it a visit.

Sandstone screens from Agra

I had the day off work on Friday and went to the V&A to see the Power of Making and Private Eye exhibitions. The V&A ranks as one of my favourite museums in London. It is packed with so much variety and stuff that you could easily spend a day wandering through it and not see everything - something which I have done many times. The Power of Making contained some interesting bits (a wooden battle bot for Stephen Hawkings(!) and this video) and the Private Eye exhibition is well worth a visit if you are in London - the outbursts of belly laughs from other visitors make it worth it in itself.

One of the highlights was definitely the sandstone screens in the Middle East room. Although they are (relatively) modern reproductions of 16th century originals they really are something to behold. Made up of geometric patterns, they have a handcut aspect to them in that they are not perfectly straight lined but also fit together with no problems. Definitely going to be looking at try out a print like this in the very near future.

New idea

A new idea I have been working on. Think this will look great as wrapping paper or maybe a print.

New designs

Spent my Sunday afternoon photographing and uploading a load of new designs. All now available in my Etsy shop:

Anton Stankowski

Something I came across recently while looking through printmaking and linocut tags on Tumblr were the linocuts of the graphic designer Anton Stankowski. They are appearing again and again and for good reason. Amazingly simple geometric designs using black ink make a massive impression. So, so good...

Stop motion making

Making a sheet of wrapping paper from David Stelfox on Vimeo.

Thames Festival

Last weekend Bridget and I had a stall at the Thames Fesitval as part of the Craft Trail, which was a series of mini-craft fairs dotted all the way from Tower Bridge to the Tate Modern. We were by City Hall and had an awesome view of the City all weekend, it reminded me why I love London!

A mini-photo essay: wrapping paper, from conception to completion

As a way to get more inspiration, I spent a couple of days doing a two minute drawing exercise. I set myself a couple of basic rules (two minutes, each drawing unique and no more than two colours) and each hour I did a drawing. The picture above is some pages from my sketchbook.

From my sketchbook I drew the pattern out onto graph paper.

I used graphite paper to transfer the image from the graph paper to the lino block

The cut block.

Laid out materials: brown paper, rollers, lino block, ink, plastic thing for spreading out ink

Printing in progress

The finished sheet

Close up of the finished design