David Newton Prints – Sunday 3rd January 2010

A YEAR IN PRINT

So this is where it begins. I have decided to commit to a years blog in which I document the trials and tribulations of pursuing a creative career – making a living from my art.

This began over a year ago in which I learned screen printing (- ‘screen printing’ is something I will elaborate on at some point in a future blog. For now it is a printing technique in which I can replicate my art through manual printing  – It is NOT computer / digital printing.) I love screen printing – it’s almost a technique in which you can experiment with your sketch book almost editing and coloring in preliminary sketches – not loosing face of an ‘original’ – every print is a one off. It’s a style which suited my work immensely and a technique which I wish I had stumbled across sooner.

I first learned screen printing at a studio called ‘SNAP’ in Bristol. An artist called Simon Tozer taught myself and my great friend  Vicky on a 1 day Christmas card printing workshop. I went back later that month and Simon helped me print a design I’d had for some time (a 5 colored print!). Having now been hooked I returned home to London, thinking I would return to Bristol to print again. I never did. My brother and his fiance then asked me to print their wedding invites, So I just joined a print studio in Dalston and prevailed with the techniques Simon gave me. The invites were a success and needless to say, I did not stop printing.

6 months later… I’d built up my ‘screen print’ portfolio with no particular commercial venture in mind. They were mainly prints that I was producing as specific gifts for friends. At the same time, a great friend; Chloe Langlois (- like me, she was also remembering her drawing hands after a lengthy spell away from it) had been building up her print based portfolio too. We decided to set up a market stall selling our prints (Fancy and Fondant). Initially our aim was to merely fund printmaking. We ran our first stall in October to great success and then booked a series of Christmas stalls from November through December 2009 at various art and craft markets in London. There was a real buzz in finding people that wanted to buy and appreciate our images.

The number of opportunities and ideas that were generated from limited exposure to other artists, arts professionals and members of the public surprised me. People were very generous to new faces, sharing their ideas and experiences. There is a wealth of knowledge ‘out there’.  This led me to want to document this journey not only through prints but also an online community. The kernel of my idea is this blog: an online forum where I can maintain a diary that follows the path, marketing ideas, strategies, contacts and crazy plans that succeed and fail across one calender year. This will be an open forum and will feature created visual images – working to produce an illustrated ‘How to’ guide for emerging creatives. It is going to be a huge challenge for me to swap my ‘creative’ head to a ‘commercial’ head and I think this is a challenge that any successful artist has to struggle with.

Chloe and David’s print market project is called ‘Fancy and Fondant’ (www.fancyandfondant.com). This project remains. Think of Fancy and Fondant as the ‘product’ and this blog (David Newton Prints) is the diary of me as a contributing artist to this joint venture and beyond as an individual.

I will structure this so that I don’t loose direction and by the end of the year can support myself through printing. One problem highlighted through the December market stalls is the time and energy put into selling the print was taken away from creating a new print. Consequently,  I intend to set a rigid structure, a manifesto that I will carry out for the year. The first line of my manifesto is that I will produce a new print every week:

These prints are going to be part of the story, they will be reflections of the journey I’m on and reactions to commercial opportunities – 52 weeks, 52 prints.