Part of Sunny Bank Mills Print Festival 2025.

This 2-hour workshop will involve making an intaglio drypoint printing plate using a thick acetate as our plate and using a variety of subjects as our inspiration – images can be from sketches or photographs or you can work from your own imagination. Please bring along any sketches or photographs you’d like to work from, or Cath will have a range of images that can be used as a starting point. The advantage of using acetate is being able to trace our images directly from a drawing or photograph onto the plate, meaning the technique is suitable for those who don’t feel as confident at drawing.

Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate with a hard pointed needle. Traditionally the plate was copper but now acetate, zinc or Plexiglas are more commonly used. The technique is thought to have been invented by the Housebook Master, a south German 15th century artist.

You will be introduced to a range of mark making tools and techniques to make our plates. There will be a range of coloured oil-based etching inks so you can explore printing the same plate using different colours.

By the end of the workshop you should have a small edition of 2 or 3 prints to take home. You can choose to work 10cm x 15cm, portrait or landscape, or square 15 x 15cm. If you wish, please bring an A4 sized folder to take your prints home.

Printmaking can get messy, please wear old clothes or bring an apron. Cath will provide gloves and all other materials.

Suitable for ages `16+. Under 18s must be accompanied by an adult at all time.

Artist bio:

Cath Brooke undertook foundation studies at Leeds College of Art before studying Fine Art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne where her interest in industrial spaces began during sketching trips to Swan Hunter shipyard on the River Tyne. Following University she started an evening class at Leeds College of Art where she became hooked on printmaking.

Her practice is inspired by urban and industrial landscapes. Cath’s images focus on changing industrial landscapes and ways in which nature responds when large industrial structures are abandoned: shipyards, power-stations and steel furnaces etc. She often visits the same sites many times, documenting the changes taking place.

Cath is fascinated by coastal industrial areas where large industrial structures, oil tankers and container vessels sit alongside areas of natural beauty and our nature reserves. She is also interested in new industry adjacent to old – wind turbines turning next to cooling towers. Cath’s current work focuses on post-industrial Teesside including the re-integration of seals into Greatham Creek over the last half century. As industry declines, nature returns.