Holes

I’ve been working on a book swop for Artists Books 3.0. The theme for this swop is 'holes'. I was inspired by The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

Because of the way the book has developed, using pages from a recycled book, it won’t fit the size parameters for this swop but I'm going to finish the edition and use it for 'pay it forward' instead. 

This image is from the working proof. I’ll post more of the whole book when the finished versions have been sent out.

CMYK Almost

I’ve been trying overlaying transfer printing using CMYK separations.

 I don’t have process colours in litho ink so I’m going with the red, blue and yellow that I’ve got.

 I used about 50% extender to try and make the ink more transparent but I think with these colours I need to use more.

I like the effect of just the red, yellow and blue. I want to make a few more prints like these before I try overlaying the final black

Overprinting

I’ve started to explore overlapping colour. I’ve used the whole image on both layers of some and only parts of the image on the second layer of others.

 

I like these prints where the same image has been repeated in both colours of ink

The others I'm not as happy with. Being selective with the second layer has possibilities although the areas that have only got one colour of ink look thin in comparison to the rest. I think I would like to try three colours making sure that all areas have at least two colours of ink.

Gum Arabic Again

I can’t seem to leave the photo album alone. I think I’ve done all I want to for the time being on transparent  images...

 but I still keep playing with layering in photoshop. 

I’ve decided to explore gum arabic transfer printing with these images (I’ve done bits in the past but they are a bit hit and miss).

I wanted to persevere with my old mono laser printer to generate the paper image. In the past I’ve not had much success and have had to keep going round to the corner shop to use their very old photocopier –it can end up being very expensive and in winter you can get very wet!

Eventually I’ve managed some reasonable monochromatic prints. The next step is to start exploring layering different colours and transparencies of ink

Blocked

I seem to have been having one of those dry spells that we all seem to have from time to time, there’s no particular reason but ideas just haven’t been flowing.

I decided that it was time to just choose one project and get to grips with it. I’m way behind with ALAW  so that seemed to be the logical choice

I had been trying to explore a fictional place through narrative but after a while I came to the conclusion that such a small format was just too difficult to fit the words in without them looking clumsy and badly spaced. I will develop the narrative idea further but not for this project.

So I started looking at old maps and started to play with black and white.

I finally chose one from 1845 when the town was starting to develop as an industrial area. There are streets and buildings on here that I recognise.

This is what I’ve posted so far