Alfie Fox works with photography, digital art, print, text, collage, and making films. He enjoys experimenting with new techniques and building his skills across different art mediums.
His artwork advocates and challenges people’s perspectives of access for people with disabilities and incorporates the difficulties he has personally faced as a young man with multiple disabilities.
Alfie enjoys showing his favourite themes of Dr Who, Money, Prime Minister of the day, and people he works with at Pyramid.
Alfie uses screen printing as his main art form, using the facilities at Leeds Print Workshop to create vibrant and fun sets of images. Often distorting the obvious into a fractal display of shapes and colours that takes the viewer by surprise and need a moment of observation to work out what they are looking at.
Behind the scenes with Alfie
Alfie created his Iron Man prints through various stages. First, he used his skills in Adobe Photoshop to create the iconic image of his favourite Marvel Superhero, Iron Man.
“I chose Iron Man because I like how he uses technology to help people. I like that he is an ordinary man who uses technology to become super. To make the print, I found images on google and collaged them together in Photoshop. After I have the final image, I change the mode into CMYK. I split channels which creates separate layers of colour to print – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and ‘Key’ or ‘key plate’ (black). I change the mode to a bitmap to make a halftone screen – this makes each layer dotted and they are off set so that they don’t just stack on top of each other.”
Once separated into its CYMK parts, acetates were printed to allow for a silkscreen to be made. By passing light through a specially coated screen, the areas blocked by black ink remain soft, whereas the exposed areas harden. This means the soft parts can be washed away to reveal the image on the screen (image 1).
Each layer is then printed to build up and create the final print. Ink is pulled through the screen using a squeegee, evenly coating the paper with a thin layer of smooth ink (images 2 & 3).
“I practiced a lot to to do it right. I found a way that works for me. I have someone to help put pressure on the squeegee while I pull it – this helps me get my best prints.”
Your Patreon exclusive print was created during the Leeds Print Workshop and Pyramid collaborative working project ‘Prints of Possibility’, which gives Pyramid artists closed access to the print workshop to freely explore different types of printing processes.
“I like having more Pyramid artists in the space. I work with Carl at LPW once a week, but on Prints of Possibility days I get to work with other artists too. I like working with new people.”
