in the studio

This week was all about relief printing. Early in the week I printed from styrofoam. An old meat tray (well cleaned) can be used just by drawing into it with a pencil. This can then be relief rolled or painted onto. I had mixed results with this. Several times mid process, I thought I really should be taking pictures of this, but it didn't happen. There will be a step by step post if I do it again.

monoprint:first try, painted in. 

Seeing this made me realize that I needed the background to complete the image. I cleaned off the plate and rolled it with acrylic paint, because it was handy. And now it makes more sense.

relief rolled

third try, painted in, monoprint

This is the plate post printing the above image. 

I really liked the look of the plate a whole lot better than the look of the print. Another artist suggested I print on black paper. I told her she was a genius. Sometimes you need someone else to point out things that are obvious.

. This is pre-printing.

I had a scrap of dark blue pastel paper. I didn't soak it because I didn't really think it would hold up to the water. And I used mostly straight paint without an extender. It didn't print except for couple of smudges. I didn't even bother to take a picture of it. Still worth examining further.

Next up was linoleum block print, or linocut for short. I did take some good in progress pics and posted about it earlier in the week here.

I was too light in the carving on this first try. The next day, I recarved parts of it and changed the blend. This was closer to what I wanted.

Today I reprinted with a slightly different color story and I am really happy with this. This picture isn't great, but I was dealing with late afternoon light. The paper is white. I printed an edition of 8 on this one. Printmaking isn't up on my website yet, so if you are interested in one of these, contact me directly.

Next up: some more experimenting! I have a plan for a multi-color lino (probably) multiple edition project based on the work I did this week. Another foam tray project, if for no other reason than to document it better than I did. And I've discovered not only paper lithography but aluminum foil lithography - although these will require some extra supplies like oil based ink.

#printoctober: linocut

It started with the missing brayer. I don't know exactly when I lost it. I saw it often when I didn't need it, and hadn't needed it in years. And then I started with monotypes and thought how handy it would be to roll the brayer over the top of the paper to print. But I couldn't find it. So I was using a spoon. True story.

My husband in a show of support went out to buy me a brayer and found a small intro to linoleum block printing kit, with a brayer included. Somewhere I have wood block carving stuff, but I haven't even tried to look for that and now here's this kit. And it #printoctober. And you don't need a press for linocuts. So here we are and what am I going to do with this?

Block printing is very graphic and my work just isn't at this point, but I came up with a plan. Keeping with the small landscape idea and to use a blend. (of course now I'm thinking I need multiple blocks...)

inadvertent ad for Speedball

I was thinking of this piece to recreate. I drive by this spot often and I really like it.

copse

Here's a bit of the blend: violet, white and brown. I found clearanced ink at Michael's and was thrilled that there was magenta and yellow, but no cyan. Violet would have to do for now. And since I had to get the violet, and there was no green either, I got brown. And red.

the blend

the inked block

the print. 

It's not a great print. The 4" brayer is a little narrower than the 4" block. hmm... Bigger would be better here. And I was a little too delicate with the carving, so I will be reworking this in the next few days and reprinting. The thicker linework shows very well, but the rest gets lost, so I need to bump up all of the cuts to the next size blade.