Eric Ravilious: Linocut Christmas Cards Workshop

Combine your visit to this year’s Towner Christmas Fair with this Christmas Card making workshop, inspired by Eric Ravilious’s prints of festive imagery and winter scenes.

Specially programmed to align with the evening opening of our Christmas Fair, this workshop, led by artist Zara Wilkins, will explore Ravilious’s distinctive use of dots, dashes, and lines that he developed through his wood engraving practice.

In this workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to create one or two linocut designs and experiment with printing them in different colours. You’ll then use your own designs to create a selection of handmade Christmas cards to send to friends and family this year, all inspired by Ravilious’s beautiful winter imagery. There will also be some larger paper available if you’d like to experiment further by turning your design into wrapping paper. At the end of the session, you’ll be able to take your lino designs away with you – in addition to your selection of finished cards and wrapping paper - should you wish to continue your crafting at home.

While Ravilious originally created his images using woodblock printing, we’ll be working with linocut, which is easier to get to grips with in a single session, making this a fun and accessible opportunity for complete beginners – no previous experience is needed. If you’re interested in trying out woodblock printing too, we’d recommend our regular four-week Wood Engraving courses: Wood Engraving: Four Week Course — Towner Eastbourne

Zara, your tutor, will guide you throughout this workshop, teaching you the basics of linocut printing as well as helping you develop your own designs.

All materials will be provided, so all you need to bring is yourself! The session will be 4 hours, from 12.00pm to 4.00pm, and will include a break, when hot drinks will be provided. The Towner Christmas Fair will be open directly afterwards, from 4.00pm to 7.00pm.

This workshop will be taught by Zara Wilkins, who has over three years’ experience teaching art to beginner adults. She first studied illustration at university, graduating in 2019 and subsequently worked in illustration before moving into her passion of teaching. Zara is a multidisciplinary artist, spanning many mediums over her education, career, and personal life. For the last three years she has been teaching watercolours full time and as of this year has begun teaching lino printing to beginners in Brighton.