Drypoint and Collagraph Winter Retreat

Leicester Print Workshop is delighted to present our first three day Winter Printmaking Retreats in early 2022.

Taking place over the last weekend in January, these three day immersions will give participants a chance to dedicate time to their printmaking practice. With a choice of Drypoint, (with Senior Lecturer in Printmaking at the University of Northampton and tutor for Printmaking at Open College of Arts, artist Michelle Keegan) Linocut (with renown Leicester artist and printmaker Sarah Kirby) and Mokuhanga (with Northumbria based printmaker and artist book maker Lucy May Schofield), participants will enjoy the opportunity to experiment, play, explore and focus on their chosen technique.

These courses build on the successes of our popular weeklong Summer Schools, and present a new opportunity for artistic development, inspiration and growth over Winter.

This three day course is a fantastic opportunity to work with artist-educator Michelle Keegan, experimenting with mark-making and building surface and tone on aluminium plates.

You will work with a number of plates of different sizes, using traditional scrapers and drypoint needles alongside sanding and more innovative mark-making approaches.

Learn how to ink your plates in various ways, exploring à la poupée techniques and multi-plate, multi-colour inking techniques. Experiment with the arrangement of the plates to make different compositions and using transparent inks to achieve layering of colour and images.

We will also explore the highly versatile process of collagraph printing, working with a number of plates and exploring mark-making and shape. You will learn how to build up layers of tone and line on a mount board surface, and how to combine your drypoints and collagraphs, with multi-plate and multi-colour options of printing. You will also learn chine-collé techniques, composition and registration tricks, to produce more sophisticated prints.

Course Structure

Day 1

Exploring drypoint and developing imagery on aluminium plates. Printing with al la poupée techniques.

Day 2

Exploring collagraph plate making and developing multi plate prints.

Day 3

Combination prints and developing your imagery through both drypoint and collagraph plates.

Learn about registration.

Exploring line, colour, chine colle and layering.

About the Tutor

Michelle Keegan is a Printmaker and educator. She is the Senior Lecturer in Printmaking at the University of Northampton and tutor for Printmaking at Open College of Arts. Michelle is also a guest tutor at numerous Print Workshops. She studied Fine Art at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, graduating with first class honours. She specialised in Printmaking immediately, having been intrigued by the possibilities of Printmaking. Michelle continued her post graduate education at the Slade School of Fine Art. She has made Prints and exhibited widely for the past 25 years.

Her work explores boundaries between people and places, liminality. It explores the dynamics and ambiguities of relationships, therefore exposing private ways of seeing and that of wider public discourses. Printmaking is essential to the work; it is symbiotic with the idea. The etching process and materiality of Printmaking becomes a spontaneous transcription of feelings and memories, both familiar and elusive. The results are intricate and complex multi-layered prints that resist literal interpretation and lack referential scale, honouring instead a physically charged and deeply personal mapping of the environment.

https://www.keeganarts.co.uk
https://www.keeganarts.co.uk/galleries-1-1

Leicester Print Workshop 

Leicester Print Workshop is the regional development centre for printmaking. Established by artists in 1986, we are a registered charity, supported by Arts Council England. Our RIBA award-winning building is situated in Leicester City Centre's Cultural Quarter and is home to a large, well equipped open access Printmaking Studio.

We have over 30 years’ experience of teaching people printmaking. Our programme offers the largest number and broadest range of printmaking courses in the region, with courses suitable for beginners as well as experienced printmakers, delivered by practicing artists and nationally renowned tutors. Participants learn in small and friendly groups in our purpose-designed studio.