Valentines Mansion print masterclasses

These workshops are masterclasses because they are based on close examination of original works by major artists – Hogarth, Blake, Nash, Bewick, and others, so that you can see how they used specific printmaking techniques, and then learn how to use those techniques yourself. Julian Walker trained as a printmaker in the 1980s and has been exploring print history and techniques since then.

Masterclass 1 – Wood engraving

We will be making close examination of original prints and books by Thomas Bewick, Paul Nash, Joan Hassall, Claire Leighton and Gertrude Hermes, to see how their techniques created such extraordinarily beautiful works. 

Thomas Bewick trained as a copperplate engraver in the late eighteenth century, before developing the technique of wood-engraving, cutting into the endgrain of hard wood with fine chisels rather than knives or gouges, which opened up the possibility of simultaneous black-line and white-line design, and allowing almost unbelievable detail. While his masterworks, the illustrations for  A General History of Quadrupeds (1790) and A History of British Birds(1797 and 1804) brought a new kind of natural history illustrating to many readers (A History of British Birds is mentioned in Jane Eyre), Bewick is even more appreciated for his tiny vignettes of rural life, often humorous and showing his deep empathy with the natural environment (see above).

The hardness of endgrain printing, as well as allowing fineness of design, increased the potential print run; Bewick’s works ran into many editions, and his blocks can still be used today. Nineteenth-century journalism, such as The Illustrated London News, made extensive use of wood-engraving; we will be looking at how they managed to create large pictures using assembly-line techniques, long before Henry Ford’s car factories.

In the twentieth century wood-engraving became a widely used technique in British book illustration. Private presses such as the Golden Cockerel Press commissioned work by artists such as Robert Gibbings and Gertrude Hermes to create a recognisably English style of book illustration.

We will be using the tools specific to wood engraving - gravers, burins and spitstickers – and learning how to engrave on boxwood using a bench-hook and sandbag. We will be printing by hand, burnishing and using a Victorian hand-press, and, since wood-engraving is so dependent on fine hand-control, we will be examining how to adapt tools to individual requirements. We will also be looking at cheaper alternatives to boxwood.

All tools and materials supplied.

11-4.30 -  18 August, 11 September,  3 November, 2019

£60 per person, maximum number of 3 per session.

Masterclass 2 - Copperplate print engraving

Printing from engraved metal plates is recorded from before Gutenberg’s introduction of movable type in the mid-fifteenth century, and by the early sixteenth century the technique was being used in Italy to reproduce the designs of paintings for wider public consumption. Engraving on copper plates for printing, intaglio printing, creates lines into which the ink is pushed; the surface is wiped clean, and damped paper is pressed on under high pressure, picking up the ink from the grooves. Close examination of prints shows the ink sitting proud of the surface, which creates effects very different from the pressed down ink of relief printing.

Copper-plate engraving was the technique of mass-reproduction of images in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the process speeded up by the introduction of the line-engraving machine in the 1820s, which itself brought about a mechanical sense of formulaic image-making, and the superseding of engraving by lithography and wood engraving. Engraving had almost disappeared by 1900, and only a few twentieth century artists, notably Picasso, Vieillard and Edward Bawden, used the technique.

We will be looking at the curious rise and fall of engraving, and examining some original works of some of the masters of engraving, William Hogarth – a fine example of whose work is on show in the Mansion, the great seventeenth century engraver Wenceslaus Hollar, and William Blake, who worked as an engraver, and whose plates were printed by his wife Catherine. 

Copperplate engraving is essentially a line technique, requiring few specialist tools; while mastery of the tools allows great sensitivity, any indentation made on the surface can hold ink – surfaces can be dented, scratched, and distressed in many ways, giving different effects. We will look at mezzotint and have a go at ‘stipple and burnish’ engraving.

We will be learning how to use the tools specific to copperplate engraving – essentially very fine-pointed chisels – and learning how to engrave on zinc using a bench-hook and sandbag. We will be learning the processes of preparing a plate for printing, and taking impressions using a press; and, since copperplate engraving is so dependent on fine hand-control, we will be examining how to adapt tools to individual requirements. 

All tools and materials supplied.

11-4.30   - 27 August, 22 September, 15 October, 2019

£60 per person, maximum number of 3 per session.

Booking via julianwalker20@gmail.com 

Workshop 3

I will also be leading a workshop in experimental printmaking, more or less as and when requested. Ideally for groups of 3, but 2 is viable. 

We'll be trying out a selection from the following: 

safe etching without acid 
various methods of distressing the surface of metal for printing (stipple, sanding, burnishing) 
sugar-lift and cheat-aquatint 
engraving on soft metal 
collograph and mixed viscosity printing 
multiple stencilling 
printing over antique printing (18th century)

It should be fun. Again, 11-4, £60 per person.