I’m Tess. I keep the offcuts.

Sometimes they are the best part of the day’s work. Usually they are just very tidy scraps.

I live in Norwich and make prints in the evenings. My table is not large, my paper storage is one shallow box, and my favourite tool is a ruler with a small nick near the middle. These limits make decisions easier. I cannot keep every possibility open, so I choose two colours and a few shapes and see how much they can say.

Learning to leave space

When I began, I filled every page. If there was a gap, I assumed it needed a mark. Looking back through those early sheets, I can almost hear how hard I was trying. Now I make myself leave an area untouched until the very end. Often it stays untouched. The blank paper has become a material I work with rather than a problem to solve.

I like the ordinary objects around printmaking almost as much as the prints: folded paper guards, a stack of test sheets, the little strip that catches spare ink. There is something satisfying about arranging a temporary workspace carefully and returning it to a kitchen afterwards. Dinner is an excellent deadline when the alternative is moving the same circle all night.

The work on these pages

Tess is a fictional maker, and the portfolio is a small imagined body of geometric work. Window / Round is the central colour study. The print table notes give its choices a little context. I want the pages to feel like opening a flat folder: a few considered pieces, enough room around them, and a pencilled explanation tucked into the back.