Letterpress!

My work was recently chosen to be letterpress printed by Whiteman Park Print Shop and featured in a letterpress exhibition along with 19 other artworks! The theme was "My Perth" and it had to be in 2 colours - orange and blue. The exhibition was part of Whiteman Park Print Shop's letterpress printing 25th anniversary celebrations.

I always think of the Swan River as being the heart of Perth and of course it's namesake - the swan! So I came up with a sketch of a swan floating down the Swan River with a baby swan on its back (to increase the cuteness factor) and a view of the Perth city skyline in the background... then I set about turning it into something suitable for a 2 colour letterpress print. 



I've never had anything letterpress printed before and was very excited to see how it would turn out. But I had to wait til the opening day of the exhibition to see it in person. I was not disappointed as it looked even better than I had imagined! I really like the brightness of the colours and being able to see the slight indentation of the printing plates and the texture of the paper. As well as seeing the other artworks at the opening, I also got to see the old letterpress equipment in use and lots of samples of letterpress printing. It was very interesting!



Thank you to Ann and the team at Whiteman Park Print Shop for organising and printing. I hope I will get to participate in something like this again!

Note: In case you're wondering about the 'third colour' in my print, it was achieved by overprinting, so the orange and blue were printed on top of each other to create another colour.