Bits and pieces

The end of November is when the drama society put on our pantomime (this year it was Cinderella). This means not much else gets done.Though I have had another go at CMYK separation gum arabic prints using my own and photoshoped family photographs for the image. The technique seems to be working but cumulatively the colours are too dark. I think I’ll try the same images again after Christmas but next time I’ll put quite a bit more extender in the ink to make it more transparent.

Gum Arabic Again

In between enjoying a new grandson at home and going to Skye for a very waterlogged week with the old one I somehow haven’t got round to posting recently.

I’ve been exploring gum arabic printing further with some larger prints.

(The scanner seems to have leeched all the colour out of the following ones)

(it took a while to get the pressure right) 

 And more colour separations

 (this is a larger better version of earlier experiments)

I‘ve also been building on the collagraph work I did for ‘Fragments’ and have been designing a larger, more complicated  block which I hope to print later on this week.

Holes

After deciding that the bookworm book was the wrong size for the parameters of the ‘Holes’ swop (Artist Books 3.0) I decided to revisit family photographs again.

When looking through old photos we usually can recognise Aunty Jean or Cousin Fred but often in a group there is someone who nobody can identify. I decided to use this idea of missing identity and take it further by taking the anonymous person out of the image altogether leaving a hole where they had been.

The images are all presented in scans of different sized photoframes.

This frame theme continues on the front and the back of the book

Colour Separation Continues

I've been trying more gum arabic transfer printing but am having problems producing an edition of predictable uniform prints with three or four different coloured layers. I will persevere because I think it will come with practice but I have decided to also try making 4 colour etchings using the same digital images as the gum arabic prints. (I've only posted one of the images because blogger refuses to accept that the other one is a jpeg and won't use it)

 I've produced a set of CMYK separations and used peel n blue to transfer them onto aluminium plate.Before I bite them I need to work into them to stop out any bits where the resist hasn't stuck.

Further progress will probably have to wait until later next week as I'm off the the Manchester Artists Book fair tomorrow.

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

Transparency

I came across the acetates I’d made for solar printing the other day. I liked the way you could see through the clear parts to the image behind.

Starting by making some smaller inkjet prints on acetate I decided that the ink side of the print needs protecting. It is susceptible to scratching but also feels slightly sticky because of the layer of ‘stuff’ on the film that the ink sticks too.

As I started to arrange and play with the order it occurred to me that if they were thicker they might resemble the glass plate negatives that some of the original photos will have been produced on. I cannot print directly onto perspex so I have been experimenting with layering ink jet prints (on acetate) with other materials to give a more substantial feel.

Inkjet transfer print wasn’t successful onto a nonporous surface and using gel medium to stick the print to a substrate leaves drying marks, the gel is difficult to spread absolutely evenly and because it is encased between two plastic layers it doesn’t dry well. Stuck to a flexible material it also peels away, not good for a book structure

Laminating the acetate seems to be the most successful method so far. They aren’t as thick as I’d like but they will stand independently.  I think I can do something with these.

Exploring Personal Histories

As part of the experiments I’ve been doing for ‘Personal Histories’ I’ve been scanning family photographs.

My husband has an old family album. It’s quite small with leather covered wood boards (very wormy) and it’s not in the best of conditions. It’s probably more accurate to say that he has bits of a family album. Restoring it is beyond my skills but I decided to scan the pages and boards and create a digitally printed facsimile.

Of course I got carried away; having scanned the pages it was easy to create extra blank frames to add more photos that weren't originally in the album.

I printed it on cheap printer paper in black and white just to see what I could do with it. The images are concertinaed and the end pages glued to the cover. This was just a quick way to explore the idea rather than sewing but I quite like the way it opens out. 

 If I am more restrained with the number of pages I think this structure could be adapted to work with a chain of dancing dolls.

Pondering Personal Histories

I’ve been thinking about how to start my Personal Histories book.

When I went on a solar print workshop a few months ago I used old family photos as the basis for some designs and I want to continue using these as source material for this project

We all have a stash somewhere of old photos, some of relatives and friends we recognise and others who we don’t have a clue about who they are. As time passes they just become faces. We may know their name, if it is written on the back, but we don’t know anything about them.

I also think most families will have a scattering of heroes and villains in amongst the majority of the ordinary people who make up their ancestry. Their stories may have been completely fictionalized in the telling and retelling, or just forgotten over the years.

I want to combine these two ideas, the hidden stories and the almost anonymous figures.

I’ve decided base my images on the children’s rhyme “Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief”. We’ve probably all got some of these amongst our antecedents.

I’m not sure yet what structure to use. You’d think I’d learn from experience and sort this out first. It would avoid a lot of problems further down the road! However, at the moment I’m contemplating a series of unbound images jumbled together in a box/container the same way that the original source photos are kept, although I also quite like the idea of a frieze of dancing dolls.

This is Agnes Hall. I decided to divorce her from Thomas.

Folding prints

College holidays have finished. This means that play time has been restricted over the past couple of weeks. Having managed to ignore it up to now prep for next term has had to take priority.

However I have explored monoprinting plants with a rainbow roll and folding to make a simple structure

I’ve also committed to making something for Robyn’s Personal Histories Exhibition. I think I’ll play more with the ancestors photos as a starting point.

Solar Plate Workshop

This weekend I went on a course at the Hot Bed Press. I took the acetates that I’d prepared earlier.

We were shown how to expose the plates using various UV exposure units. The plates are then developed in warm water before printing. 

My images were printed intaglio but you can also use the process to create relief blocks.

 I like the idea of being able to manipulate the image digitally before printing and being able to get a great deal of detail and a full range of tones from the plate

On the down side you can’t work into the plate to alter and develop it further. I also had problems with the paper sticking to the surface on some of my prints althoug I think that would improve with practice. (The emulsion on the plates also smell foul when its been developed)

But it’s an interesting process that I think I would like to explore more.

More from the album

Some of the photos I've scanned are not what you'd call flattering.
 

They're beginning to bring out my dark side.

Family Album

I’m going to a solar etching workshop at the Hot Bed Press in a couple of weeks time and I have to take some acetate transparencies to use to expose the plates. I thought this would be a good opportunity to use some old family photos that we found whilst sorting out junk a few weeks ago.

 

I scanned the photos, some objects and printed stuff, took some photos I thought might be useful and started to layer them in Photoshop.

I just used objects that I thought would fit the spaces but am finding that I can start to read stories into the images. 

I’m not sure if they will be contrasty enough for the print workshop but I think they may be the starting point for a book.