Rita Fürstenau (3/5)

Rita Fürstenau from Germany makes beautiful prints and illustrations. As Rita’s always busy with work – she also holds illustration workshops and has her own publishing company with two friends – she has created lovely workspaces for herself, one of which is in a Swedish country house. In her blog, she tells us more about her work and life.

Hello again. This week I want to tell a bit about one of my pattern designs: Foliate, a geometric repeat I created to cover a series of hand-printed sketch booklets.

When I started working on Foliate, I aimed to draw a simple design with an even composition that works for screen printing. What I like about geometric structures is the joy of combining and variation, as well as playing around with colors.

In this case, it’s possible to combine two layers of the pattern to create different textures. Thereby the prints can be either in the same color or in different ones.

It’s also possible to use transparent ink in order to create a third color in the overlap. That way we were able to print many different designs with only one screen.

When the printing of an intended edition is finished, it’s always tempting to carry on and print the pattern on whatever lies around. So most times, I just go on and print some labels, postcards and extra paper that I can use for all kinds of things.