Visiting Lecturer: LOUISE LOCKHART

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Louise Lockhart's practice centres around products, printing and application.
After graduating, she worked for a short while in a stationery shop in Canada, selling printed products and greetings cards that evidently inspired the work she makes now that sits in similar gift and stationery shops. I think that this was where Lockhart discovered how her work sits in the market and fits in commercial illustration.
She runs an online shop called 'The Printed Peanut' with all sorts of lovely goodies from prints to soap that are made to be sold as products.

I found myself drawn to her traditional toys and games, especially when she commented that she was fed up of modern toys being 'PLASTIC AND NAFF', a sentiment I've been fighting with handmade dolls/toys in my own practice.

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Lockhart makes prints of her work using a Risograph machine. A hybrid screen printer/photocopier, it's designed for cheap, quick prints (for leaflets/flyers in the business industry) but have are much-loved by illustrators for the natural GRAIN/texture they produce. The quality of her prints therefore looks old-school and worn.

I love the textures that Risograph produces and would really like to have a go at making some Riso prints myself. There is a Riso print company in Leeds and it's super cheap.

Lockhart told us that she wants it to look handmade.
She uses photoshop as a tool to combine scanned printed textures/found papers and add text.

I appreciate that and much prefer handmade aesthetic to the digitally constructed image, but I also feel a little like I'm being cheated when an image is made to 'look' handmade. Similarly to how shops label new clothes with a grungey/distressed image as 'vintage', I find it a little inaccurate and in-genuine.