soft ground experiments

With time to spare in the workshop today I decided to try some experiments in soft ground etching. Soft ground has always been my favourite way to create etched images but as we are a 'non toxic' workshop the traditional method of melting wax onto the plate is out. I read that Graphic Chemical relief ink can be used as a ground; soft when it's wet and then also as a hard ground when it's dry, and thought it might be worth a try...


I tried various thicknesses of ink, applied with a roller, and various different tools to draw both through paper (which lifts off ground) and directly (which displaces it). I tried drawing on the plate as soon as it was coated, then at 10 minute intervals as the ink dried. Unlike my previous attempts with a different acrylic soft ground, this ink seems to dry quite slowly giving a large window of opportunity for drawing... top image drawn through paper after 5 mins, bottom drawn after 35 mins...

I also tried painting with various consistencies of the ink directly on the un-coated plate, and used water to dissolve parts creating the opposite effect...

I didn't get chance to etch the plates as the ink takes up to 24 hours to dry depending on thickness, but I can't wait to see what they all turn out like as it feels quite promising. Now I've just got to work out the etching times...

P.S. I like the little mono prints made with the removed ink too :)

dandelions

I've finally got round to taking some pictures of some of the books I made for the artist's book fair back in when was it, March. Thought you might like to see them. The book I am most pleased with is the one about dandelions...


The drawings were done on a lovely sunny day, whilst weeding and dreaming in my garden. At the moment it's an overgrown mess, but one day it will be a little paradise I hope.

Its screen printed in dark brown and white, I made the background by painting indian ink on tracing paper over the drawings. This can then be exposed directly to the screen which I think gives it a directness often lost on computer generated images (or perhaps its that I'm no good at computers, who knows) I think its the first screen print I have made that I'm actually pleased with...


After looking through the book the back cover opens to reveal behind the weeds a little plan of my garden, how it is now not how it will be when its done... and then the plan lifts up to show a careful drawing of the dirt that was left in the fold of my sketch book when I finally put the dandelions on the compost heap. You can see more pics here


The whole this can be opened completely to look at all the weeds at once. I've got one framed on my desk to remind me. Go out and do the weeding.

skull problem

I've been having a bit of trouble with my skull prints... They're etchings, and to print etchings the paper must be soaked. But paper, when soaked tends to stretch and shrink, which, to my dismay, doesn't go well at all with the precise measurements associated with concertina books...


So after spending the morning printing 5 strips of eight plates I found the next day they were about 2cm shorter and the pages wouldn't line up at all. That's the way to learn I suppose, it seems to be the way I'm learning at the moment at least... So. Onto plan B.


Individual sewn pages?
On a concertina spine?
French folded?

I wish there were more hours in the day!

work in progress

It's half term this week which means I finished work at half four instead of half eight, and for the first time this year I left work in the day light, a thing to be celebrated! It's still light as I type this and it feels like such a liberation, the birds are singing, I survived winter again...

And I've been working on some etchings; skulls I drew after my visit to the Natural History Museum. There's something about them all lined up in cases; categorised, classified. What is it that appeals to me? Diagrammed and named, no flesh.

Below is a proof of the etched plates, pieces of copper 6cm square, just the lines...


And with the aquatint solution sprayed across the surface, stopped out with acrylic paint, ready to etch...


Another proof, this time after the aquatint. So far so good.


I'm planning to make a little concertina book with these prints, with a slip case to contain it. Tomorrow.

neighbours

House buying is moving along. Slowly still. The whole process is still stressing me out, still more stressful than I imagined it would be. I hadn't expected to feel this out of control of the whole situation, to be relying so much on other people to sort it out, very frustrating! But hopefully (land registry administration willing) we should have the keys by the end of the month, and then the real fun begins...


We need to replace the electrics, the boiler and the bathroom for starters, then carpet the living room, remove the lino in the bedrooms (lino in bedrooms?!) and sand the floors, sort out the kitchen, decorate throughout and landscape the garden... And now I just want to get in there and make a start.


Anyway. These books were made from lino plates I cut a while back. I made three books with the prints, with three different bindings, but didn't really like any of them; all too fussy or not strong enough, so the idea got side tracked (and the books got put in box). A few months ago I found the plates again, and realised that the altered pamphlet stitch binding I worked out for some notebooks would work here too...


The trees are printed in black ink on BFK Rives grey paper, and also on various layers of tissue. I like the way the tissue changes the black to shades of grey. Perhaps it looks a bit like there's distance between the trees? Or mist. I like the idea of travelling through the trees as I turn the page...


I was also thinking of making some single prints of these trees for my shop, for framing, although I haven't quite worked out how to get the layers of paper and tissue to stay together. Or maybe it should be interactive? Choose your own arrangement type thing... hmmm.

Fingers crossed the solicitor rings tomorrow :)

more prints

Some more mono prints today... to be used to cover a book for my work collegue. He's getting married on Wednesday, here, it looks beautiful and I can't wait! He likes dinosaurs, specificlly pterosaurs, so that's what he's getting :)

I wanted to make the prints look like fossils, and straight forward mono printing didn't look quite right...


So I inked up a plastic plate with white ink and a roller, then place newsprint over that and drew my image. I then ran the remaining ink and plate through the press with the brown paper to get a kind of reverse image, and I think it works better...


I would've liked to have done a few more prints, becauase it's hard to get the thickness of the ink correct (correct for what I want anyway) and then the pressure of the drawing, the drawing tool and the pressure of the press all make a difference on the finnished print, but I couldn't because I ran out of paper. Oh well! These will have to do!


I'll show you when the book is done :)

rain again

I feel a bit strange today. Perhaps its because its pouring down with rain outside. Perhaps its because I've been at work all day on my own and I haven't spoken single a word since breakfast (except the ones I've spoken to myself :) )

Anyway... today I've been making some rather average monoprints (you know those days when nothing in particular goes wrong, but you're not quite feeling it? yep.) Out of about 50, these are the only ok ones, but I guess that's better than none isn't it!


And, because I had all the ink out, I did a few traditional style monoprints too...


I think these are actually better, maybe because I wasn't worring about the outcome and I did them in about 10 minutes. Hmmm, there's a lesson in that somewhere...