Scott and Luce are the printmaking powerhouse behind Toucan Tango (they will probably cringe at that description as they are ridiculously humble!) The amount of layers, colours and textures to their screenprints is utterly mindboggling to us. They have created MANY amazing gig posters for brilliant bands and also run a shop in New Brighton called SUP which stocks indie brands and also coffee and beers (sounds dreamy to us!) We are so chuffed they are a part of our Into The Trees show...especially as they made their piece right before having a baby!

Hi Scott and Luce! What is your creative process? How did you create your pieces for Into The Trees?

We keep a long list of ideas that we go back to and scratch off as we make them.This one had been on the list for quite some time then recently Scott came home from a walk with some friends with a dried rhododendron branch to use as a clothes line pole and around this time we’d been selected for the Into The Trees exhibition so we thought it was time to finally make the print.

Process wise we start with a sketch, then take that into illustrator and select a colour palette (our go to is a light blue, red, yellow and black) then overlay them to get a few other colours. We then make the separations for screen printing in illustrator before then taking each layer into photoshop to add a bit more texture. Mainly to mask our screen printing capabilities.

Finally we expose each layer onto our screens and get printing. The final image always changes a little usually in colour from our original idea but we love that about screen printing and it keeps it interesting for us.

What or who is your biggest creative influences?

A big influence for us starting to work this way are screenprinted gig posters. We stumbled upon a gig poster exhibition at a music festival in Liverpool when at Uni and fell in love with the crossover between music and graphic art. We started to get involved in this world of gig poster art and have been making them for bands ourselves for around 10 years now. There are so many gig poster artists that have inspired us but to just name a few UK folks that we love Tommy Davidson-Hawley, Drew Millward, Army of Cats, Luke Drozd, We Three Club and Telegramme were probably the original inspiration for us getting into poster making.

Whilst we developed a style over these years inspiration has come from old printed materials such as everything from vintage stamps, old beer mats, record covers and children's books. Basically anything with limited colour palettes, organic textures and bold graphics get’s our creative juices flowing.

Studio Photos by @madeleinejcreative

Do you have a favourite place to get Into The Trees?

We don’t live too far away from North Wales so we like to get out there for walks when we get some free time. Walking up from Betws y Coed around the hills and the lakes in that area then finishing at a warm pub is a perfect destress day out.

What’s coming up next for Toucan Tango?

We are expecting a little one any day so firstly learning how to manage our work around that. (Any tips give us a shout).

Then we’ve been pretty lazy on creating art prints the past few years whilst we opened and have been running SUP the shop where our print studio in attached to. We’d like to get back into the habit of creating a range of new art prints and products we can sell in the shop and wholesale to others.

Plus we turn 10 next year and would like to do something based around that and especially all the gig posters we’ve created for some of our favourite bands during that time.

SUP photo by @danbentleyphoto

Thanks so much guys!

Toucan Tango's "A Good Stick" screenprint for Into The Trees of course sold out super fast - they are taking a break whilst they bring a small person in to the World but if you'd like to hear when the second edition of "A Good Stick" goes up for sale sign up to the newsletter on their website!

Also buy their Treemendous screenprinted card HERE.

And follow Toucan Tango on Instagram HERE.