The next HAUSPRINT Etching Year starts on Monday 3 June 2024, 6.00- 9.00pm (40 weeks)

Cost: £2475 if paid in instalments/ £2330 discount paid in full/ £485 deposit to secure place

Tutors: Rob White, Michelle Avison, guest artists

The HAUSPRINT Etching Year is a unique opportunity to build your printmaking skills over the course of a year- it is designed to provide stable building blocks for your printmaking future whatever your starting point. You will be guided through a programme delivered in three parts. The course is suitable for complete beginners as well as those who have some experience and wish to further explore their printmaking practice.

The HAUSPRINT Etching Year is a unique opportunity to build your printmaking skills over the course of a year- it is designed to provide stable building blocks for your printmaking future whatever your starting point. You will gain a thorough grounding in etching techniques, from the basics of the process through to specialist techniques. These include spit bite, sugar lift, white ground, colour mixing and printing.

The course will help you understand how to make the best prints from your plates, to be able to choose inks and paper and to print and edition work to a professional standard. You will develop ideas and techniques together to develop as a printmaker and as an artist.

The course leaders Rob White and Michelle Avison are experienced artists and printmakers. Rob White is a professional master printer who works closely with contemporary artists making complex prints. He brings a wealth of very specific technical and professional printing experience to the course. Both tutors are practising artists who explore image making through print in exciting ways. Drawing will underpin the course and we will encourage you to make drawings in all sorts of ways in order to build your confidence and explore and expand your ideas for making prints.

Provisional Term Dates

Term 1

Mon 3, 10, 17, 24 June, Mon 1, 8, 15, 22 July

Term 2

Mon 9, 16, 23, 30 Sept, Mon 7, 14, 21 October, No class Mon 28 October, Extra class (full day) Sat 2 or Sunday 3 November, Mon 11, 18, 25 Nov, Mon 2, 9 Dec

Term 3

Mon 6, 13, 20, 27 Jan, Mon 3, 10 Feb, No class Mon 17 Feb, Extra class Sat 22 or Sunday 23 Feb, Mon 24 Feb, Mon 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 March, Mon 7, 14 April, No class 21 April Easter, Mon 28 April exhib prep

Private View tbc: Thursday 8 or Friday 9 May

Please contact

Michelle Avison
t: 07946 854207
e: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

To pay deposit

Part 1, Techniques and Inspiration

will lay the foundation of your understanding of etching techniques as well as guiding you to find new ways to consider and create source material for your prints. Underpinned with drawing challenges designed to develop your drawing skills as a jumping off point to explore your creative inspiration, we will build your confidence in looking, remembering, recording, imagining, and interpreting.

In Part 2, Develop and Expand

you will explore more advanced etching techniques and hone your printmaking skills, learning about paper, inks, exploring inking techniques for different results, and understanding how to print (edition) consistently in order to make your prints express your intentions.

In Part 3 you will develop a Personal Project

in a series of etchings, bringing together everything you have learnt. In this part of the course there will be opportunities to try out techniques that will compliment your etching, including chine colle, relief and monotype techniques.

Weekly classes are delivered in three blocks May- July, September - December and January- March and will include:

Demonstration of techniques and many opportunities to recap and ask questions

Drawing exercises built into the course

Group discussion

Tutorials

One-to-one critiques and tutorials, particularly important in supporting your personal project

Self- directed time in class

Specific historical and contemporary artist’s prints as reference to understanding use of technique and visual language

Guest artists will talk about their work, show examples and set briefs within the course programme

Good resources and print examples

A research/ drawing project will be set in the August and December holidays- meant to be fun and useful- not to stress you out!

Professional Practice guidance in preparation for exhibiting work

Exhibition

In the final part of the course you will prepare your work for exhibition at SLAUGHTERHAUS to celebrate your Etching Year, including all aspects of editioning, selection, photographing, framing, pricing and exhibiting your work, etc.

Exhibition (and PV party!) at the end of April 2024, date TBC

Our USP

Class size will be limited, ensuring that you will get a lot of one-to-one help and support.

The course is designed to build your confidence and skills both as an artist and a printmaker- we think that this combination is key to getting the most out of your printmaking. You will work together with your class and build a strong creative rapport with tutors and each other and the wider Slaughterhaus community of printmakers.

In addition to working with our expert tutors, we have embedded opportunities to learn from our exhibition programme into the course timetable. Accompanying each exhibition there will be a talk and class run by the exhibiting artist. These sessions will give you insight into the ways in which they use printmaking in their practice and suggest new methods to try yourself.

Three external visits give unique access to print studios and print collections, and supplement the studio classes, inspiring and broadening your knowledge of artists and printmaking technique.

You will be invited to take part in special classes run by our artist members.

10 x Studio Sessions (60 hours total) to use across the year, allowing more time to expand and explore outside the taught sessions.

The Tutors

Rob White is an experienced printer, he has worked at Thumbprint Editions and is currently working at Pauper’s press where he works with artists such as Grayson Perry, Damien Hirst, Peter Blake, Andrzej Jackowski, Stephen Chambers plus many others. Rob is an experienced artist and educator- he also teaches regular classes at Morley College, London. In his work, Rob explores mood through horizons and colour fields.

Michelle Avison set up SLAUGHTERHAUS Print Studio in 2010. An extremely experienced artist educator, Michelle also runs the Printmaking and Bookbinding Department at Morley College. Michelle attended the SLADE School of Art and Wimbledon School of Art in the 1990’s and her work explores landscape through printmaking, drawing and painting, often blurring the boundaries between them. She has prints in collections in the UK, including Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London.