Letterpress Workshop Part Two.

It has taken me FOREVER to get around to posting this. I posted part one back in July to show some photos of the process and give a bit of info about the workshop, so if you want to know more about it you should check out that post. Above are some of the final pieces that I made. They were all printed on either the Adana 8×5 or the flatbed proofing press and the paper stocks are from a range of off-cuts that Graham had. That was such a fun day. I really need to do a job that I can get printed there on the awesome Heidelberg 10 x 15 platen and hopefully Graham could let me assist him on the print job!

Letterpress Workshop Part One.

Just over a month ago I mentioned that I was going to a letterpress workshop at GTO Printers, so I thought it was about time I let you all know how it went!

I was the first to arrive on the day and Graham, the owner who ran the workshop, was kind enough to show me his Heidelberg 10 x 15 platen quickly before the others arrived. He turned it on so I could see it running… it was amazing! This was the first time I’d seen one going in real life and it was totally everything I thought it would be! I sound like a complete nerd, but letterpress is something that I’ve felt really passionate about for a long time so it was really exciting for me to finally get into it.

There were 3 of us attending the workshop and we each had our own Adana 8 x 5 press machines to work on. For the first half of the day we made up an alphabet print using Graham’s large eclectic collection of lead and wooden type. He had all sorts of different fonts in different sizes, as well as some neat ornaments.

It was quite a mission packing the letters in there and having even spacing. It wasn’t until I made my first print that I realised I had two letters upside down and had used an upside n as a u. It was quite hard to imagine what the print outcome would look like while making up a reflection of it. I guess you’d get used to it after doing it a lot of times.

I mixed up a dark teal colour, using equal parts of green and blue, for my alphabet print. It had been quite some time since I had worked with ink. I’d forgotten how satisfying it is rolling through a blob of ink and spreading it all out evenly. *nerd*

One of the other girls, Lucy, decided to try do a gradient mix – going from dark blue to pink which created a nice purple in between (see image above). I got in on that and did a quick print of this ampersand that I had my eye on from the second we got in there. It looks really cool! Will post a photo of that in Part Two.

We were also joined that day by Tara McLeod who has countless years of experience with letterpress. He showed us a heap of his work and then helped us put together a poster design. Because of the large size we made use of Graham’s flatbed proofing press which I used a little bit for my alphabet print as well. I actually really liked using it. It reminded me of making linocut prints at high school.

We each got to take home our own print of the poster to remember the day. Mine is hanging up in our lounge/dining area!

After we finished up our poster prints we got to just have a play around and make whatever we wanted. I did a set of postcard sized prints of one of my favourite quotes “As the patter gets more intricate and subtle… being swept along is no longer enough”. Still tossing up whether I should round the corners on them on not. Big decisions.

Shona from Magpie Press also dropped in during the day. It was really great to meet her as I had actually dealt with her previously via email. She printed this stunningly simple wedding invitation I worked on a while ago, which I will one day get around to showing you all! It was fantastic to hear her story and how she got into this business. Always great to get the opportunity to pick someone’s brain who is right where I wouldn’t mind being.

I learnt so much about the process of manual letterpress and would love to take another crack at it. What I’d like to do even more though is get the opportunity to use a Heidelberg! Hopefully soon I will do some designs that I can take to Graham and maybe get a chance to watch him put them together, particularly make the plates up and use the Heidelberg to make them. That would be the best!

I’ll be photographing all of the printed pieces I made sometime soon and will then post up Letterpress Workshop Part Two. Looking forward to maybe hanging some of the prints up too – just got to put a few finishing touches on them and figure out where to put them.

Exciting times!

Sorry about the scarce posts at the moment. I’ve started to work on moving my blog to WordPress and making more of a portfolio style site so I’m trying to hold off on the posts till I get it up and running.

I have a few fun posts lined up for when it’s all sorted, like my experience at the letterpress workshop, some baking adventures and a letterpress wedding invitation. Here’s a sneak peak of something we worked on at the letterpress workshop. It was so much fun!

Hopefully after tomorrow’s links post the next time I will be in touch is when my new blog/site is all go! Eeee!

Finally!

It seems like all of my workshop wishes are coming true.

First, the Calligraphy for Designers workshop popped up last month. And now, after far too many wishes for a letterpress workshop to be in Auckland, one pops up!

I’m actually mad at myself for not looking hard enough the first time when searching for Auckland-based letterpress studios. Just a few weeks ago I stumbled upon the GTO Printers website again and noticed they had a little button called ‘Workshops’. Why, oh why had I not seen this when I looked at this website last year?!

I emailed Graham, the studio owner, instantly (it happened to be 11.47pm at the time) enquiring as to when he might hold another one. He replied in the morning to tell me he was planning two for this June! I couldn’t believe my luck!

Next Monday - Queens Birthday, so it’s a long weekend - I will be spending the day at the letterpress workshop! I cannot wait to get my first taste of using a press. I’m going into this knowing pretty much nothing at all so it should hopefully be a real eye-opener, and I will see if it’s something I’d like to pursue further in the future. Eeee!

Images above are from GTO Printers’ previous workshop.