Exciting Professional Development Courses available from the Centre for Fine Print Research this summer
This summer, the Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR) at UWE Bristol will be offering up some of its experts for some professional development courses open to the public.
Take a look below for previews of some of the available courses. The full course list can be found here:
1, 2 & 3 section compendium of bookbinding skills for publishing practice
- Course Duration: 2 Days
- Dates: 14 – 15 July 2021 (9.30 AM – 4.30PM each day)
- Price: £249.00 full price / £199.00 concessionary price
In this two-day workshop practicing binders will learn new techniques and methods to enhance their repertoire in an approachable manner suitable for those just beginning to hone their skills. Using modified pamphlet stitches, chain stitches, and flexible long-stitch bindings, students will craft a series of book structures that are refined, easily adaptable, and suitable for editioning text and visual content.
Find out more and book here.
Japanese Scroll (maki-mono) & Accordion (ori-hon) Book Making
- Course Duration: 2 Days
- Dates: 22-23 July 2021 (9.30 AM – 4.30PM each day)
- Price: £249.00 full price / £199.00 concessionary price
This is an intensive two-day workshop learning the traditional Japanese art of scroll making. This structure is the oldest form of book in Japan, combining washi (mulberry paper), nori (rice paste) and cloth. Over the two days you will learn the techniques of backing cloth with paper to create book cloth using the urauchi method, alongside the skills to attach sections of paper or prints together to create invisible, seamless pages stretching for meters, bound with silk ribbon. The materials used for the scroll are all archival and sourced in Japan. The traditional processes taught on this workshop will allow you to use these skills in contemporary book arts projects. This workshop is being hosted exclusively for Centre for Fine Print Research.
Find out more and book here.
Platinum/Palladium Workshop
- Course duration: 5 Days
- Date: 23-27 August 2021 (9.30 AM – 4.30PM each day)
- Price: £749.00 Full £599.00 concessionary price.
Platinum printing is the aristocracy of the early photographic processes. The image is composed of very finely divided platinum and palladium metals that are more stable and longer lasting than silver based prints. Developed first in the 1860s and 1870s, the technique became very popular with fine art printers because of its very delicate highlights and mid-tones. This Workshop offers demonstrations and hands-on opportunity to explore this classic printing technique. No prior experience is necessary.
Find out more and book your place here.
Preparing Digital Negatives – including QuadTone RIP
- Course duration: 5 Days
- Date: 02-06 August 2021 (9.30 AM – 4.30PM each day)
- Price: £749.00 Full £599.00 concessionary price.
This workshop will show you how to use your digital images to make inkjet transparencies for contact printing using the genuine early photographic processes. There will be opportunities during the workshop to make cyanotypes (aka blueprints), salt and kallitype prints from your own images and on art papers of your choice. The workshop will enable participants to prepare digital negatives – printed on transparency film via desk-tip inkjet printers – for use with a wide variety of these processes, including cyanotype, platinum, Van Dyke, carbon and photogravure printing.
Course participants will not need prior experience with early photographic printing, but some familiarity with Photoshop or other image manipulation software would be helpful.
Find out more and book your place here.
Japanese Water-based Woodcut Printmaking (Mokuhanga)
- Course Duration: 3 Days
- Dates: 19 – 21 July 2021 (9.30 AM – 4.30PM each day)
- Price: £349.00 full price / £279.00 concessionary price
During this immersive three-day workshop, you will be introduced to the traditional Japanese art of woodblock printing. Mokuhanga is perfect for anyone interested in a non-toxic, table-top printmaking technique. Over the course of the three days, you will learn the skills to transfer an image to Japanese plywood and carve various colour separation blocks in relief, following in the tradition of Japanese Ukiyo-e printing. With no mechanical press required, only a hand held ‘baren’, you will learn the techniques to achieve various print effects, from ‘sesame printing’ to ‘bokashi’ (gradation), while registering your multi-block image through the simple but brilliant traditional ‘kento’ registration system. You will be sure to fall in love with both the process and results of this accessible, meditative, water-based printmaking method which provides endless possibilities.
Find out more and book your place here.
Photogravure: An Early Photographic Printing Process with a Modern Twist
- Course Duration: 5 Days
- Date: 06 – 10 September 2021 (9.30 AM – 4.30PM each day)
- Price: £749.00 Full £599.00 concessionary price.
Photographic printing processes from the mid and late nineteenth century offer a wide variety of printed surface, colour and texture that differ markedly from the clean, sometimes almost sterile appearance of modern digital images. The early photographic processes (aka alternative photography) require a real hands-on approach in the choice of paper, chemistry and coating, and provide every opportunity for the printmaker to produce individual and beautifully aesthetic work.
This five-day course will introduce course delegates to all the key aspects of the process. Delegates will be able to make gravure prints from at least three of their own photographic images, using film negatives, photographic prints or digital files. This course is suitable for beginners and no prior experience of intaglio printing or Photoshop (a computer program for editing digital images) is required. All materials will be provided.
Find out more and book your place here.
MOT’ing your art practice
- Course duration: 2 Days
- Date: 18-19 August 2021 (9.30 AM – 4.30PM each day)
- Price: £249.00 Full £199.00 concessionary price.
Suitable for practicing artists at any stage of development, creating in any format, willing to share something of themselves and their output with honesty and humour.
Over the two days Emma will introduce a series of practical tools with which to unpack, reflect upon and repack your art practice. By the end of the course, you will have a deeper understanding of what it is you do and why you do it. You will be able to talk with more fluidity about your output, ride the ups and downs of fluctuating motivation and feel more confident about managing your own development going forward.
Find out more and book here.
Poetic Artists’ Books
- Course Duration: 2 Days
- Dates: 11-12 August 2021 (9.30 AM – 4.30PM each day)
- Price: £249.00 full price / £199.00 concessionary price
Join Jeremy Dixon, the poet and artist’s book maker, for two days of inspirational, practical work devoted to producing your own unique poetic artists’ book. We will examine artists’ books long association with poetry and how such books can reflect, amplify and/or become the themes of the poetry they contain. We will use an eclectic range of poetic and practical bookmaking techniques including concrete poetry, erasure poetry, Found poetry, collage, pamphlets, zines, stab binding and collaboration to create new and exciting work. This will be an energetic, practical two days looking at words and poetry in fun and inclusive ways, and aims to give participants the confidence and techniques to find new ways of using words and poetry in their own practice.
Find out more and book here.
Early Photographic Printing Processes
- Course Duration: 5 Days
- Date: 20 -24 September 2021 (9.30 AM – 4.30PM each day)
- Price: £749.00 Full £599.00 concessionary price.
Photographic printing processes from the mid and late nineteenth century offer a wide variety of printed surface, colour and texture that differ markedly from the clean, perhaps almost sterile, appearance of modern digital images. This course will introduce participants to five important early processes and participants will be able to make at least one print with each processe using their own images. Materials and equipment are provided, all that is necessary is to bring along those special images ready to be made into stunning and unique prints.
Find out more and book your place here
Tetra Pak Printmaking
- Course Duration: 2 Days
- Date: 4– 5August 2021 (9.30 AM – 4.30PM each day)
- Price: £249.00 Full £199.00 concessionary price.
With its layers of paperboard, polyethylene, aluminum foil, Tetra Pak; offers not only an immediacy which other collagraph materials lack, but also a satisfying tactility when cutting, scoring, peeling and printing with this distinctive material. During this two-day introductory workshop into Tetra Pak collagraph print, the course tutor, Stephen Fowler, will facilitate the exploration of intaglio and relief print, a combination of the two processes, and the potential of mutli-plate printing. On day two there will be time to play, create and develop your own body of prints.
Find out more and book here.
The courses have very limited numbers so book now to avoid disappointment.
The Centre for Fine Print Research at UWE Bristol functions as a platform for innovative multidisciplinary research investigating creative practice through historical, scientific and industrial exchange. The research outputs of the Centre range from education, publication, collaboration and small-scale productions in all aspects of print history, practice, manufacturing and materials. Working with industry the Centre inspires cross pollination adding value by offering a unique creative perspective, enabling a practice led space for problem-solving experimentation.
