Printmaking experiments

Some snapshots of a few of the prints I made during the printmaking course with Bev Truloff.

The prints in the first photograph, apart from the red collograph print, are gelatin prints. When I was told we were going to try this, I took a look on the internet to see what they were all about. I wasn't that interested in them, thought it might be a good thing to do with students. BUT when we started making these little prints the next morning I loved the process! You brush thin acrylic paint or watercolour on the gelatin plate, lay over the paper and press by hand. There is something about the fluidity of the medium on the gelatin...it is so different from using ink on a hard surface to print from. The grey print is the most liquid looking of the three in the photo, the others I'd laid paint on thickly in places to see the effect. I made a lot of these little prints, it was fun.

When I went to buy printmaking paper the shop had pretty much been cleaned out and the paper that I did buy had a texture on it that didn't lend itself very well to my printmaking. I've just bought some new paper so I'm hoping to get back to the collographs this week. The red and black prints are two collographs that I made, the red printed first and the black second. I've some ideas for exploring this idea further. The green print is a probably a monoprint - I rolled the ink on the perspex plate, and then drew into the ink by laying over a paper drawing into which I'd cut lines. The coloured image in the same photo is a mixed media monoprint with watercolour and oil based ink.

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.