Since 2013 Ireland has celebrated surfing at its annual Surf Festival, Shore Shots. Each year the Festival has improved on the last creating an experience that offers a rare opportunity to immerse yourself in the strange, evolving social and cultural seascape that is Surfing.
Now only a week away Sligo Design Week (kudos to Denise Rushe, the darling from Starling, et al. for the hard yards put in behind it) has come to fruit with an exciting mix of exhibitions, talks, happenings and workshops. I was approached a little while back to see if I’d be keen to host a linocut printing workshop.
Was I keen? I was frothing!
It seems almost overwhelming trying to get things organised for the next month. We’re relocating out west to Sligo for another year. There, bombshell (for some) dropped. The shift is happening next weekend – from rolling tarmac to rolling fields. A cottage out on the raggedy peninsula in north County Sligo where, from the backyard, the magnificence of Dartry mountains loom up in the east and to the west the wild Atlantic yawns away in it’s glorious topaz vastness.
Sure, single-colour prints on t-shirts (black on white, white on red) can look great but getting two or more colours happening together can add depth and energy. Planning how the colours will overlap when screen-printed onto the shirts, the palette can be expanded and create a looser, more livelier image.
This week I’ve been messing about with colour separations for the t-shirt design for the Dunes Bar in Strandhill, Sligo (Ireland). It worked as a single colour but I wanted to see it jump in two. Playing with negative space has seemed to make the other colours pop and with only two colours, the print is still budgie (cheap cheap). Stoked with the above version and looking forward to getting one of these on.