Printing at home on Mother's Day

It was quiet and calm on Mother's Day at my house and I spent most of the afternoon experimenting with my AquaLina printing inks. I have discovered that they aren't ideal for creating "Artists books" using the rollings method. I think they may need the pressure of a press to be particularly good. However I did spend some time playing with colours etc and not having the distraction and stress of trying to share space with other people.

This is a print using my AquaLine inks. This is the best print so far, in my opinion. Printed 2 days after the previous prints, you can see how the black oil based ink has come through, even though the block was washed fairly throughly. With the marks from the simple barren I have used, and a colour I mixed up and on a very lightweight Japanese paper, I am very pleased with this print.





I went on to do some rolling using various items such as this lino block a couple of collographs and some leaves and even oats.


This is a rolling of the above lino block (obviously). What many of these rollings made apparent for me was the need for a bigger roller. I only have the basic 6" soft speedball roller. My son, who turned 16 this week really likes this particular print however. He creates a lot of his own artwork with stencils. I think he likes the stencil like quality of this.
This print has given me an idea for a major painting work, probably using stencils. I need to get him to pose in the same way.





A simple rolling of leaves on a stem.


The same leaves with oats scattered around.


The collograph was rolled 1st and then I removed the collograph & went over it with the oats.








The following prints were made from two collographs I created as backgrounds. I was hoping to use the press at Helen's to experiment with them but it simply wasn't possible. I did a quick drawing of some tree shapes and then peeled away the tree shapes from the cardboard. I used the tree shapes and glued them on to some other cardboard and coated them both with shellac.


This print in two colours is from the block that was carved, obviously. I did the same block only moved very slightly.


This print in two colours if from both blocks. The first block was printed in the blue and the raised block in purple.


In this print I reversed the colours and which block was printed first. I like that I am learning all sorts of things by experimenting like this. It is giving me ideas that I would like to visit in the not too distant future. I am thinking of doing printmaking with Curtin through OUA in the next SP.

My experiments aren't great art but I am learning and thats what I'm enjoying.

And now that I've caught up on my printmaking I need to start on some of my other subjects like Sculpture - assemblage. Bleurg!

Printing at Helen's cont.

As part of another subject focusing on "the design process" we were required to create a portrait for a lino block. In a previous entry I showed some ideas, as well as stages in carving the lino block. Well here is the finished piece.

This is the very first quick print to give me an idea of how the carving was going. It's printed on some old cartridge paper.
Many people liked the marks on the face but personally I didn't, and so decided to clean up the face a little.


This is the next print, after looking at some of the carving marks on the checks etc. This time I ensured that the lino was properly inked. It was printed on the same type of cartridge paper.


This was quickly printed on some Ikea wrapping paper. You can see both leaves and flower petals. I like the colour and texture that it provides.

Printing in Helen's studio

Well most of us turned up at Helen's studio among the trees, which is just beautiful. It's an old mud brick studio with lovely arched lead light windows.

I was almost an hour late and several students were well and truly into some intaglio printing on waxed milk cartoon and perspex. One of the other students did a lovely little design using the top part of the carton utilising the folds where the spout is. Very clever and it produced a lovely print. Later on one of the girls did a dry point etching, of a flower, on the perspex. It produced a lovely print as well.

After carving the tree below I has a scrap of lino left over. So I decided to just do a quick little line carving of quilting and patchwork style images. This is the very first print and so far the only print.

This is a print of the tree that I did last week. (see entry below) The only difference is this went through the press, producing a crisp, black and white print in the traditional manner. I'm quite happy with it, but would like to opportunity to play with it in other colours. I may have a go doing some rollings with it later today.

The same print, with a ghost, over top. I very much like that effect and once again I would very much like to play with this image more than I have so far been able to.

My fish stencil, with ghost, on some Ikea wrapping paper. When we printed the "Artist books" many of the students brought in some fabulous papers. One of them brought in some paper she got at Ikea several years ago. Next time I was in Melbourne at Ikea I headed to their gift wrapping section and grabbed a couple of rolls of paper. This paper has leaves and flower petals in it.

Looking for a digital camera

I spent part of the day looking at digital cameras. Below is what I fancy for my price range.

The Fuji Finepix S5700 7 megapixel digital camera is coming home soon.

Below is a piccy of it off the Fugi site.

Painting -> Drawing -> Printmaking

I skipped painting today and only briefly dropped in to drawing to hear a talk by a painter turned printmaker. Very interesting.

I spent the day working on my lino print for tomorrow's printmaking session. we go to Helen's studio, where we'll be able to use her press.

Stage 1. transferring the image onto the lino. I photocopied a mirror image so that I could see exactly what I needed to. I also used a pink ink pen so that I could clearly see where I had traced to image.

After taking off the carbon the was the result.

Half way to the completed block. And the right shoulder is killing me, it's so sore. I find carving the lino quite addictive.
I have trouble stopping, particularly when a deadline is approaching.

I've also created to more block to use as backgrounds. One is a collograph and the other a carving in cardboard.

Printmaking

I wasn't very productive in the actual producing of prints this week. However, I did start some lino cutting practice for my portrait piece that I have to do for the other subject. The tools that Beverley bought are quite nice.


This is my practice lino cut that I quickly did in class. I haven't done any lino cutting for about 25 years.

I you have a closer look at the block you will see various cuts or gouges. I stopped cutting originally because I was going to put leaves on the tops of the branches as well but decided to do a quick print to see what it looked like.


I decided I liked the style of cuts in the corners of the tree branches and wished I had done less on some of the other areas. I might try to tidy up the block and make some of those areas look a little sharper.

Painting & Drawing this week

Last week Pi & Andrew said we'd all be going up to the Gaol this week, which is on a hill overlooking town, for some "En plein air" painting. Well last week we all knew it was going to bucket down raining, which it did! After Pi fluttered around for at least three quarters of an hour saying "Well I don't know what we're going to do" I walked out and went home.

I didn't go back for the afternoon session of drawing which was apparently very similiar. On a positive note, I see alot the yards looking very green, which a is nice change from the brown dust bowls masquerading as lawns.