Original sketch and end result for one of my favorite prints - Bloom (merg) 2026

Tape 04 -- Sketch  25.07.26 --

Tracks -- Aphex Twin, Xtal.  Waylon Jennings, Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?. Germs, Lexicon Devil  --

 All of my prints start with a pencil sketch. Sometimes these sketches come about when I need them. Sometimes I can sit down with the full intention to draw something and come up with nothing, sometimes I’ll absentmindedly doodle something on the back of an envelope while on hold and that will become eventually become one of the prints that I’m most proud of. Even before I tried my hand at screen printing this was the process - - roughly outlining a design or illustration by hand,  digitising them, then editing the results. For a while, and before I discovered screen printing, I was happy with this process. However I couldn’t help but feel as though there was something missing from the process, as if I was missing the final step. I was proud enough of the end results but a small part of me couldn’t help but wonder if there was a medium that was better suited to my work. 

 One of the earlier design clients that I had was an independent upholsterer who needed some printed material - - pamphlets, display material etc - -  put together for an industry show. Up until that point all of my work had been digital only so I was more than happy to try my hand at something new.  To my surprise picking up the proofs from the commercial printers we were using sparked an idea that I hadn’t anticipated. There was something about actually producing something tangible, an object that can be held and observed, that appealed to me. Having an actual print in my hand also changed the way I felt about the work itself. That flatness, or the missing final step of the process, that I had perceived in what I was producing wasn’t present when it was printed. I would do a few more printed projects like this, and each time I would see how much more alive the work was when printed, how the colours I used would interact with paper much more vividly than they would on screen. Discovering screen printing felt like the logical next step in that process. I realise that I felt like a designer in search of a medium. Someone who was looking for the best method to produce the work that I wanted to, and screen printing provided the perfect methodology to do that.