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🌈 Say hey to Abi Prints! 🌈

Here at Hunt The Moon, we're proud to work with and support creative artists across the UK. With takeovers, tutorials and showcases we're able to highlight the fantastic work being created. We were lucky to work with Abi Prints for a Hunt The Moon takeover, which you can read here.

But first, we thought we'd the time to introduce you to exactly who Abi Prints is.

Abi Prints, aka Abi is a printmaker based in Manchester, UK where she creates colourful and fun screenprints, risographs, greetings cards and wall art.

"Abi Prints came to life in 2020, when I had a gap between jobs. I loved printmaking after learning a little about it in college and after doing a week-long course in Screenprinting in 2019, at Hot Bed Press in Salford, I knew I wanted to keep experimenting and creating more." - Abi

We discovered Abi through our Instagram, and we all immediately fell in love with her work and unique style. Abi often uses vibrant and poppy colour, making her designs bold and bright - I mean just look at this ink shelf, full of fluorescent inks!

We asked Abi what she would class her art style as:

"My art style ranges from graphic vector art to painterly abstract pieces, depending on what is inspiring me in the moment. I take lots of inspiration from nature, as well as buildings and more geometric structures. I like to challenge myself to make each print series different and try to learn new techniques along the way."

In the wonderful world Abi Prints 🌈

We thought we'd showcase some of her favourite screen printing projects she has worked on:

Planets Screen Printed Series 🌍

I created this series using fluorescent inks and printed a series of one off totes and prints. I love how each print turned out unique, especially on the paper ones as my screen picked up lots of texture from the totes, so it added cool and interesting patterns when I pulled it through onto the paper. This technique is known as mono printing.

Lighthouse Risograph 💡

As well as Screen Printing, I also love risograph. This is a type of Japanese printing, where you roll ink drums over the print to build up each layer inside a big printer. This is done using a positive created with tiny dots, meaning you can have different transparencies of each colour and blend together really well. As it is still ink you can still get really punchy fluorescent colours and metallic inks, like the gold I used in my lighthouse print.

Chameleon Screenprint 🦎

This is one of my latest screenprints and features lots of Hunt the Moon, fluorescent inks. I really love this print as it’s so vibrant and I created it from hand-cut paper stencils. Towards the end of last year, I started trying out new kinds of paper to print on, I found this recycled cotton rag paper and the texture and thickness is amazing to print on and gives this set of prints a very high quality feel.

My Top Three Tricks & Tips ✨

Talk about your designs, get feedback from your peers, your friends and family. Show them what you are working on and ask for their thoughts. It’s up to you what to do with those but I find this very helpful, especially when I’m stuck on what to do next.

Think about what you are printing on, is it material, coloured card, white card, what is the weight and quality? These will all affect how your final design feels in the real world, think about how you want it to manifest.

Try out different colour palettes. Once I have designed something, I usually test out about three different colour options before picking the final ones. This usually involves holding up pots of paint at my computer.

Abi's Top Product Picks 🎨

My absolute favourite products are Hunt The Moon Fluorescent Ink Sets, it’s definitely the set I have purchased the most! The pink is crazy and the colours overall are so vibrant, which you don’t always get with other inks brands.

I also recommend keeping an eye on the Monthly Ink Subscription Box, I got some of my favourite inks from the one off sets, which had a fluorescent blue, red and orange.

What's next? Any advice for the Screen Printers out there?

In terms of new projects, I am always trying to think of new ideas and I want to try and combine my love of printmaking and animation in a bigger series of some kind. As well as this, I really want to print on more textiles, definitely more totes and maybe t-shirts and jackets.