Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/08/2013 - 02/08/2013
10:00 am
Location
Regional Print Centre
Categories No Categories
01 August – 02 August
Wood Engraving with Anne Desmet RA
Anne Desmet RA will run this two-day course, for beginners or those with some experience. Participants will learn the techniques and skills of engraving and printing from traditional end-grain blocks of lemon and box wood, as well as how to apply the same skills to the engraving of modern, inexpensive, polymer plastic alternatives. The course will commence with an introduction to the engravings of a wide range of artists, historic and contemporary, from Eric Gill and Paul Nash to Edwina Ellis and Anne Desmet, with an emphasis on studying the diversity of approaches to the medium employed by a wide range of artists, to produce extremely diverse and powerful work of great visual intensity. Students will have access to the full range of wood engraving tools: spitstickers, gravers, scorpers, tint and multiple tools and will learn, via hands-on practical working and demonstrations, each tool’s traditional uses and how to apply them in contemporary image-making. Students will learn how to identify suitable papers for printing engraving blocks and they will print their engravings using a relief printing press and also by hand-burnishing; they will also learn how to sharpen engraving tools. Desmet will introduce the possibilities of using collage with wood engraving to create unusual and surprising visual effects.
Students should bring their own sketches and photographs from which to develop their own subject matter – and should bear in mind that they will be working at a very small scale (wood blocks will fit in the palm of the average hand) and that imagery with strong tonal contrasts is particularly suitable for working in the wood engraving medium. At the end of the two days, students will have produced several finished engravings printed in black ink on white or toned paper.
Anne Desmet RA RE
Born in Liverpool, England, in 1964, Anne Desmet has a BFA and MA in Fine Art (Oxon); a Postgrad. Printmaking Dip. (Central School of Art, London); and was a Rome Scholar in Printmaking at the British School at Rome in 1989-90. Specializing in wood engraving, linocut and mixed media printed collage, often of architectural/metamorphosing subjects, Desmet has won 31 national and international awards for her work; has had over 20 solo exhibitions worldwide; and has works in more than 20 museum collections including (in the UK) the British Museum, the British Library and V&A, which all commissioned engravings from her. Her work is also in public collections in France, Russia, Poland, Italy, Finland, Brazil and the USA. Her first major retrospective exhibition was at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (1998); her second at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK (2008). Both exhibitions later toured other UK museums and galleries from 1998-9 and from 2008-10 respectively. Published author/editor of three printmaking books, Anne Desmet was editor of Printmaking Today magazine from 1998-2013. She has been an invited selector, since 1991, for over 20 Open Print exhibitions in the UK, Bulgaria and Canada and was a guest speaker at the Regional Print Centre’s Print Symposium last year. In 2011 Desmet was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts (RA). She lives and works in London.
All Workshops: Non-members £120.00/Members £75.00
Booking essential (via email or telephone)
<BR>t: 01978 311794 e: printcentre@yale-wrexham.ac.uk
