A print, a holiday and a workshop

The print

When I started working on the etching for the 20:20 I was just playing with shapes and trying quick resists. I used sellotape to blank out part of the plate and stencilled circles and stars through sequin waste with acrylic paint. When I looked at it I thought that stripes would work in the blank spaces and after proofing I decided that text would improve it.

Looking at it the circles evoked chain link fencing , together with the stars and stripes I thought something from the poem in the statue of Liberty might be appropriate. (Although I’m not sure, given the ridiculous political situation we find ourselves in in Britain at the moment, that I have the right to seem to criticise any other countries attitude to borders and immigration)

So I etched the text onto a blank plate and redid the composition behind it. When it was proofed it wasn’t successful. The text and image fight each other. I may play with it with different colours but not for the print swop.

However I had another go at inking the first aluminium plate using a warmer coloured ink. I liked the look of it after wiping with scrim (but before polishing with tissue). I decided to test print and I was really surprised. I’ve now printed the rest of the edition

The holiday

We went away last week to Port Isaac, a beautiful village in Cornwall. We walked and I took lots of photos. Have got some new ideas for books and prints

 The Workshop

Linked to an exhibition at Salford Art Gallery Sean and Lois at Hot Bed Press are doing a workshop over four days, two weekends. Rather than concentrating on a specific printmaking method or producing a finished image it is aimed at making you look, mix processes, think and experiment. The first two days, looking at line and mark making, shape and composition, were great. No work that I’m going to post but lots of ideas to take forwards, which is the whole point of the exercise.

I am so looking forward to the next session next weekend

Butterflies and Shells

As part of my attempts to put hand printed text into my books I have gone back to exploring gum arabic printing.

I started playing with images, two of my husband’s ancestors combined with clocks and butterflies, to relearn the techniques and explore registration

 The butterflies look too cut out next to the figures and I should have  introduced more contrast into the images before printing them with the laser printer.

I do like the ghost that has printed from the paper onto the second printing plate. 

These were made by overprinting colours on plates that were printouts of a black and white image

The next step was to try colour separation and text. I put Ariel’s song onto some images of shells that I made a while ago. I used a cmyk separation to print the plates.

Spot the not so deliberate mistake.This was printed with prussian blue, burnt umber and yellow
ochre litho ink

Next session at HBP I explored process coloured etching inks with cmyk separations.

I'm happy with the registration and printing now I need to go back to the drawing board and work out the images to go with the words I want to put in the book.