Blog post: 15 August 2024

Print room days at Dumfries House

Print Residency - 29th July - 8th August 2024, Dumfries House, Scotland.

In July 2024, I had a fabulous opportunity to join alumni from the Royal Drawing School on a print residency at Dumfries House. This was to include precious time in the print room, an opportunity to draw en plein air on a stunning estate of 2,000 acres and work as an Artist in Residence in the 18th-century house.

Aside from the beauty of the grounds, the facilities are quite simply awesome, with each artist afforded a dedicated studio space and access to a print room made in heaven. All the printing activities at Dumfries House were carried out under Print Manager Sarah Devlin's stewardship in the magnificent print room. Working alongside alumni of the RDS Drawing Year was an immense privilege. They were a great bunch.

Since the Scottish weather was mostly fine throughout my stay, I spent most of the time that I wasn't in the print room outdoors working en plein air. I'd been out drawing from 7am before the print room opened and had started work with a view of Dumfries House through the trees. My etching experiments would be based upon these early A3 sketchbook drawings.

A3 sketchbook studies for my etching, 'Dumfries House through the trees'

With only 4 days in the print room as part of my residency, the challenge was to make best use of the time on the press. I had taken up some pre-made collagraph blocks (made with cereal packets) to work on between etching processes to see how they'd print at scale. I've been keen to understand the intaglio results from these blocks which I'd also been using to make relief graphite imprints since I hadn't been able to successfully print them at home, without a press. The stark intaglio proofs contrast with the more mysterious graphite imprint relief experiments that were begun in Geraint Evan's Kings Cross core class at the Royal Drawing School last year. I see these experiments as an ongoing inquiry to understand the best print approach to reflect the textural mark making that is often a characteristic of my sketchbook drawings.

Collagraph blocks: graphite imprints and test print details

My Peacock collagraph which was made from en plein air drawings in Great Dixter in April completely exceeded my expectations. I was pleased I had brought these blocks with me to test print. It felt like a massive step forward.

More about the residency | 1 | 2 ‎ | 3 ‎ | 4 ‎|

Karen and other residency artists working with Print Manager, Sarah Devlin in the print room at Dumfries House.

Kings Cross collagraph

Peacock collagraph