About
Anna Alcock completed a BA Fine Arts from University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa.
She graduated in 2004 with a MA Printmaking from Camberwell College of Art.
She exhibits internationally and her art is in private and public collections in South Africa, Australia, America, Germany and throughout the UK. Her pieces are inspired and influenced by Africa and her experiences of growing up in a hot vibrant country.
Using printmaking as her primary medium, Alcock’s subject matter is personal and her love of myths, folktales and stories underpin the narratives.
Anna Alcock is Director of Inky Cuttlefish Studios
There are three main areas of printmaking that Anna works in:
One of my zinc plates
Intaglio: which means ‘from underneath’. The plates are inked up by putting ink into the drawn lines, the excess ink on the surface of the plate (copper or zinc in Anna’s case) is wiped clean. Then the wet 100% cotton paper is placed onto top of the plate, which is put through the etching press under enormous pressure. The wet paper is forced into all the little lines and picks up the ink…and that’s how you get an intaglio print. Intaglio prints can be etchings (using acid), drypoint (physically drawing onto the plate), aquatint (the tonal feel comes from rosin dust that is shaken onto the plate), mezzotint or engraving (physically putting the tones and lines onto the plate).
Elephant in Pyjamas
Screenprints: Anna uses a combination of paper templates, freely drawing onto screens and uv photographic exposure emulsion to do her screenprints.
Woodcut Blocks
Relief prints: these are linocuts, wood cuts and wood-engravings. All quite physical processes where the plate is carved by hand with wood-cutting tools or wood-engraving tools (they are different) and then printed on either a relief press or by hand (rubbing the back of the paper). Wood-engraving tends to be quite small and finely detailed as the wood is very fine (end-grain) and expensive.
Colour is added by either printing multiple plates like ‘African Dawn’ and ‘The Moon Hunt’ or by adding the colour by hand.
Hand-coloured linocuts. Each linocut is individually painted with water-colour to give an extra depth of colour.
