adventures

Over Easter we travelled to Ireland for the wedding of one of my best friends. To the south west coast, through the green hills that reminded me of home, on to the mountains...

This is the view from our bedroom window, sunshine every day. And the view up (and down) Knockatee mountain...


You can see the harbour where we stayed and the wedding took place, in the distance, and the Atlantic... it was beautiful...


(shhh. that's me on the rear left :) ) The reception was in this amazing old barn, the walls hung with multi coloured scarves and hangings, candles and rose petals and weeds creeping in at the windows...


Reminded me a little of my latest screen prints... Perhaps it's all the weeding I've been doing recently...


Happy days

ferns

Some more etchings, that developed from the experiments I spoke of the other day...

I started of with some line drawings of the little ferns I found growing in the courtyard outside...


(you can see more detail if you click on the images) I then put on an aquatint ground (using speedball screen filler in an airbrush, we don't use rosin as it's pretty toxic!) and stopped out various areas to create this...



I'm still not sure which I like best (before or after the aquatint), but there's no going back now :) I blocked out the areas of tone fairly freely, with not too much of an idea of what I wanted to end up with. They're not perfect (and it's made me realise that I need much more practice inking up and printing the plate, its so hard to get it even) but they could've been worse, definitely something to build upon...



I want to try and combine some of these prints with my books, perhaps on the cover, or inside as endpapers, hopefully I'd get chance to have a play around with that next week...

experiments

I've been doing some more etching experiments (continuing on from the vaseline ones a few months ago), this time with oil based printing ink...


The ink doeasn't hold up very well in the ferric (the chemical used to etch the plate) but because of this, and depending on the ink's thickness, it gives a lovely speckly etch, which you can see if you click on this picture to enlarge it...


It's hard to catch it at the right moment, too long and all you get is black... not a good look! I tried various ways of applying the ink; directly with a roller, transfered from another plate by passing through the press, smearing with a cloth, and inking up ferns and pressing these onto the pre aqautinted plate.

Here I applied ink with a roller, then ferns, then run it all through the press so the ferns picked up the ink and left the copper exposed. It wasn't as successful as I hoped!


And this is kind of the opposite process; ink from the ferns transferred to the aquatint plate (the scratches are becuase I was using the backs of old plates for my experiments, copper is expensive these days!) I think this has potential for use as a background, in a lighter colour (but don't get me started on colour, there's too much to think about already!)


This is the print that was left on the paper when I ran the first plate through the press...


And this one is a print of the ink left on the ferns...


I like these mono prints, you can really see the detail of the ferns if you click to make the image bigger :) And they're so quick and surprising to produce (remember the bird mono prints I did a while back? I've been wanting to have a go at that with plants (as opposed to paper cut outs) for a while now, hopefully I'll get chance to try it out next week!)

I feel like I'm getting somewhere with these etchings though, it's difficult as there are so many variables, but I also kind of like that, it's partly out of my control and I feel like that gives me the freedom to mess it up. I'm not trying to make anything 'finnished' with these, just to see what's possible. The hard bit comes when I try to take a bit more control and it becomes my fault when it looks rubbish; insted of being able to put it down to chance, fate or accident the outcome relies more on skill. Scary prospect!

experiments

In the print room where I work we try to keep toxic chemicals to a minimum. For etching we use copper etched by ferric chloride (much safer than traditional nitric acid which does all sorts of dodgy things to a person!) and follow the method explained by Keith Howard in his book 'Non Toxic Intaglio Printmaking'.

 

This method is fairly new to me, and so I've been messing about with some scraps of copper and different resists; varnish, acrylic paint, marker pen and vaseline...

I've found the vaseline particularly interesting, spreading it in a thin layer and using a pencil/needle/finger to draw through it and move it about on the plate... lots of potential there I think...

And what I'm really looking for is a kind of soft ground etching technique (as I sometimes find hard ground etched lines too fine; soft ground lines have a softer, blunt pencil like line which I like), vaseline seems to have potential for this too... any ideas?? 

Sorry if this is all a bit garbled, it's been a busy day... But there's nothing like a good old experiment is there :)

work in progress continued...

I like lino prints; the effect created by flat blocks of colour and sharp lines. But I've not had much practice at making my own prints, and I always find it a bit hard to wrap my head around what to cut when... so this week I've been trying to improve my technique a bit...

The process of cutting a reduction lino plate (like this one) really feels to go against my instincts; the instincts that lead me to hoarding and wanting to keep things as they are. I find it hard to cut into the plate that I've just printed in order to start the next layer, what if I cut it wrong and ruin it? What if I make it worse?? It gets harder the more layers a print has, by the third layer I'm really having to force myself to make the cut and then print over the already-quite-nice-looking prints... But its the same for any artist I suppose, perhaps the point is that risks must be taken, perhaps something quite-nice must be destroyed to create something good... 

Its still hard though!

So, above is the plate from yesterday (and to answer your question from yesterday Barbara, its a lino plate, but looking at the image today, I think it works quite well as it is. Hmmm, something to think about...) in its various stages...

And some of the prints...

I think, in the end, the fourth layer (the outline) didn't work so well. The line is too heavy, I like the images best without it (which  is kind of lucky because halfway through printing the last layer the beak snapped off, then the toe, so I guess thats the end of that!)

This print was also an experiment in colour. I don't have much experience with colour mixing (what with most of my prints being black and my books being white :) ) I sometimes find the many decisions that need to be made overwhelming (and it ends up brown), and with a four layer print the combinations from even a few colours become incomprehensible to me. so I really tried to limit myself, and although I'm not entirely happy with the end results, I feel a little more confident about trying again.

P.S. I know its annoying but I've turned on the little spam protection letters on the comments. Dodgy spam comments had started to appear, and thats no good, so hopefully the letters will put a halt to that...

catch up

I say catch up, but  I wonder, where should I start? My first full week of work has flown by, and I feel like I've been there much longer, which I suppose is a good sign! I've realised I have to throw myself into it, and not wait to be told, as the three men that work there are very gentlemanly and seem to be keeping all the dirty jobs for themselves :) 

But seriously, they have made me feel very welcome and there has even been a little time to have a play...

I also finished the gloves... I pulled back the original one and knitted it again,  making it longer as planned. But there was still something not quite right, it was too baggy. I knit the next glove slightly smaller and it definitely fits much better, so I bit the bullet, pulled back the first one for the second time and knit it up again to match. At least I know the pattern off by heart now!

I don't have any pictures of the new gloves. In fact I don't have any pictures of any of the things I want to show you, because it's got to that time of year when I leave the house in the dark in the morning and return home from work in the dark in the evening. All my photos are yellow tinged and which ever filters I twiddle in photoshop I can't seem to do anything about it. The photos still look like they were taken in the Seventies (which is not necessarily a bad thing, just not the look I'm after...)

But tomorrow is another day, and hopefully it will stay light long enough for me to take some snaps. How long 'til Spring??!

birdies!

Well, here you go... some of the bird prints printed from the collograph plates I spoke of a few days ago... (If you click on them they go bigger I think :) )


It was good to get back in the print room, and straight away I did that classic thing of first inking up the plate too much (print so dark I could hardly see a thing) then totally over compensating the next time and polishing the plate too much...


Its amazing what you forget isn't it! By about the third time I felt I was slowly getting back into the swing of things. I know I have so much to learn and re-learn, but it was a big relief that things started to come back to me. I could feel my hands getting back into the rhythm of mixing and scraping and wiping, and I have to say, it felt good! Like riding a bike I suppose (I hope!)


So, although I'm not overwhelmed by these prints; there is much to be improved on here, I'm happy that I've done it, got back in the saddle and had a go. And (as usually happens) I think I like the messy inked up worn out plate the best...

and another...

Matt said this one looked scary, I was going for inquisitive...


It's all in the eyes I think...

Anyway, either way I'm off to print it tomorrow :)

another birdie

I'm getting nervous now. About my new job. I'm supposed to be going in next week, before I officially start, to get to know the print room and have a go with the presses and things, but I'm scared! I just realised that I've been making work in the secrecy of my own room for over a year now, with no one there to see when things aren't going how I want (or when I'm having a tantrum because I did it wrong...) Really the only people who get to see those parts are you, and even then I still get to choose what I show you... So when I think of that big open print room, and the people who have employed me because they think I'm good at this sort of thing looking on as I make my mistakes, well, it makes me nervous! But I'm sure I'll be ok, this sort of thing is good for me right?!


So, I thought I better just make a start and this bird is the first thing I'm planning to print there. Its a collagraph plate, it just needs varnishing to protect it then its ready to be inked up and run through the press.

When I think of collagraphs the first thing that springs to mind is card covered with glue and scrunched up tinfoil, coils of string and a bit of someones old net curtain. I've never had much success with them (and I'm sure this is down to my own personal prejudices developed from the big thick lolloping messes I produced and then swiftly disposed off at school) but when my new boss explained the method they teach the students at LCAD I was very impressed at the results the students have achieved, the images had a range of subtle tones, not a bottle top in sight! They use a simple cardboard base and cut out thin layers with a scalpel, some areas are burnished with a bone folder or rounghed up with sandpaper. Thin layers of PVA or tippex can be used to create smoother areas or different textures of paper cut out and attached; it is all kept very flat. The whole thing is then varnished to seal it then inked up like an etching plate and printed....

I'll show you when it's done (even if it all goes horribly wrong :) )

pea prints

Wild sweet peas have taken over a flowerbed in the garden. No flowers have appeared, just lots and lots of twirly curly sprouts and pairs of leaves and little tendrils wrapped tightly around each other. I like them. And they make nice prints...