Experimental printmaking

This week I'm at an interesting course about printmaking - not the kind you need fancy presses and acid and so forth for but quicker, more experimental printmaking. I hesitated to use oil based inks as I'm a bit wary of the smelly solvents but with good ventilation at the studio decided to give it a go. After working with my acrylic ink and watching the others for a couple of hours I could see that the other inks were rather nice. We've used oil inks, acrylic inks, watercolour and acrylic paints, made gelatin monoprints (what fun that was!), printed with found organic materials and man made materials, made collographs, and we've still got two days to do. Today I was making a monoprint on a glass plate using one of my life drawing images and after printing a few layers went on to paint on it with watercolour. We're doing mixed media on Friday and I'm really looking forward to that. I've made a collograph of the same subject and have posted a picture of that above - it's got wet ink on it but I cleaned that off deciding it needed more shellac to protect the card layers and I might make another tiny cut or two.

It isn't easy working alongside others in a small space but particularly so with printmaking which needs a LOT of space. We have prints drying all over the place, on the floor under tables, hanging up inside (too wet to hang outside - so much rain this week), on the deck under cover.

I've finally used that shellac I bought a long time ago (to protect the collagraph plates). That is an interesting material and it has such a history.

It's fantastic watching people really getting into it and making enormous numbers of prints because they're obsessed with a certain shape or whatever.

I will post some images at the end of the week.