in the studio

This week in the studio has been all about experimenting. I had the idea to print on my paintings and had an old canvas that was never really completed. I'm still not done with this. I think I actually will finish this piece and I could see a series develop out of what I'm learning this week.

I'm printing with existing plates on this canvas and I'm using acrylic paint, not ink. The block ink I have right now is water soluble so it would get incorporated into the next layer if I were to paint over it. I will need to get some permanent block ink before I really finish working through this idea. For now, acrylic paint is fine.

Here are some work in progress pics. I began with the acrylic paint of the original painting and added in ink linework, followed by:

relief printing (styrofoam)

acrylic paint, relief printing (styrofoam)

I'm not crazy about the brick pattern that forms with the styrofoam plate printing. They print much better when burnished from the backside of the canvas. This is going back to these prints and I need to get some positive space text and not just negative space text. I'm also thinking about carving blocks for each word of text, and even creating an entire alphabet, so I could have a sort of movable text. I think both of these ideas allow for a lot more flexibility and a somewhat cleaner looking end result.

acrylic (text)

relief printing (collagraph)

relief printing (collagraph)

While my original printing-on-paintings idea wasn't to have this end result, it does remind me of the peeling paint/graffiti/old painted billboards look of the styrofoam prints which I liked and that is where I can see this particular piece heading. There will be several more collagraph layers added. The two on there right now are just cardboard plates. It's also sparked a bunch of other old ideas that never quite resolved themselves. The experimenting will continue...