A favorite lino cut

Today’s print is one I did some time ago but probably not one I’ve posted anywhere before; I’ve not had the time I planned today to make new work.

This is a print from a favourite linocut

Another breakdown print

I’m posting another breakdown print today as I made 2 consecutive prints on the same paper- so it shows haw the print changes with each use of the screen. It’s a bit like a  ‘can you spot the difference’ puzzle.  In this particular case they are pretty obvious.

Printing in blue 5

This has its origins WAY back. I still have to work out a way of doing with this what it was I wanted to do with this idea.

Sitting in a lecture one day I kept dropping 3 elastic bands onto the page in front of me- fascinated by the random way they fell. I ended up repeating the process and photographing the results with the aim of making work from them.

This print was made with elastic bands- which don’t really print that well, so I overprinted with blue.

Printing in blue 4

And a final one of these  that started off life as a very basic landscape. In this case I think the addition of the blue layer has made it look more like a seascape with boats!

 

Printing in blue 3

And another that started off life as a very basic landscape

 

Printing in blue 2

 

Another that started life as a very basic landscape- sorry about the reflection from the flash.

Printing with blue 1

Today I’ve been playing around with some part printed stuff I found as part of my tidy up- printing is more fun than tidying. The trouble is that coming back to things I have lost the original momentum, so I can’t say I’m overly enamoured with any of the stuff I’ve printed today.

I also seem to have had a bit of a problem with the registration (which isn’t totally spot on for the second pass through the press) but as I’ve cropped the photos that’s not obvious. Not the best photos either as the light was poor by the time I took these, and so there’s a bit of flash reflecting on the ink.

So all in all not the greatest- but something new to post for today.

This print is one of a number I think I started to make at the beginning of last summer. I was playing with very abstracted landscapes- where there were only simple lines and shapes, and circles for trees, each taken from a series of photographs I’d taken earlier in the year.  

I simply copied the basic shapes and over printed in a rather beautiful blue. Not the best prints- but something to work from as , with many of the monoprints I make, I see the ones that don’t ‘work’ as I might wish as contributing to developing new work.

Not everything works

If it wasn’t for the fact that I want to post a print a day ( because that was the challenge I set myself) I wouldn’t choose to post this- but as it is this is this only print I have available to show for today, and it’s not great, though I will admit that some of the problem is the poor quality of the photograph which I took in  a hurry.

Today’s print is a soft ground etching I made the other week out of an embroidered piece I did a few years ago and which I found in the studio tidy-up ( which somehow has ground to a halt!) and no longer had a use for.

However, the point of doing this was to see if it worked- and I have identified that there are aspects of this I can work with, and aspects that I need to work around if I want to make prints in this way again. So it might not be the best print I have posted- but it has a use to me.

The challenge with this plate is to see what I can do with it to get an interesting print.

 

Atticus

Today’s print is special- it’s my kitten’s paw print.  He went missing, and today I’ve devoted much of the day to finding him, so no real printing done. Luckily he’s safely home at last thanks to a good neighbour realising he was lost, and happily back sitting in front of the fire.

Something new

I never really expected this to work entirely- it was an experiment on the hoof- without access to a decent image, using poor quality paper as a basis, and with the sketchiest idea of how it was supposed to work, but it did – just about.

 

 

 

This is a print made from a paper ‘plate’ using the method of ‘ gum arabic transfer’- at least I think I used that method! It’s a ridge of trees n on a road I travel along quite often- and it is blurry as it was taken from a moving car through the window- but I like the image that it has created, and it has given me a desire to play with this technique further to see of I can make it work as I believe it is capable of doing. Hopefully more images to follow at some point in the future.

Dandilion

More prints from the clear up. Sometimes I’m simply in a mood to make plates, and I don’t always print them for ages as making them is a nice clean operation which I can go do anywhere in the house using up a few minutes here and there, but printing them is messy and takes time and requires me to commit to a solid block of time in the studio which isn’t always possible.

This is a plate which I scratched out a last summer , and is basically a sketch  book piece for a project I never actually developed. ( There are a number of unfinished dandelions using various methods which I ought to get around to completing at some point )

 

This particular print is a drypoint scratched with an etching needle into a Perspex sheet. It’s not worked as well as I would have liked- but that’s the point of sketches, they are simply about developing ideas, and perhaps the fact that the image is a little indistinct is suitable for the subject.   

Green Ghost 2

Another ghost print from the same series.

 

Green Ghost 1

One of the things I always like about printing is that often a plate might yield more than one print, and that what is left as a ghost image on the plate is so different and can take one’s work in a wholly new direction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And another left over green ink monoprint

No hearts and flowers

I know  it’s Valentine’s day , but all those hearts and flowers everywhere can get a bit much- so just for the  sake of it I’ve gone as far away from the colour red as I can for today’s print.

 

I had some green ink left, and I’d always rather make a monoprint than simply clear it up, even though it takes a bit longer- so this is today’s offering

A very old lino cut.

 

Sometimes I just doodle on odd bits of lino- this plate is one that happened in this way. As it makes only a single colour print, it's not that interesting, but there's not much area left that I could cut into again and make a multi coloured print other than getting rid of the image or the background lines. So I'll probably leave it as it is and might simply colour other areas when I print it.  

First ever plate

During my tidy up I also found the very first plate I ever made- a colograph, and I couldn’t resist taking a print from that too.

Old plates

Although I had black ink left rolled out, the real reason I’s been in my studio was to do a bit of a much needed tidy up. And because I did tidy up ( a tiny bit) I found a plate I’d made years ago as a photoetching  which I don’t actually remember ever printing – so here goes.

It’s a print from a photograph I took of the ‘new’ Wakefield market when I worked on the city centre regeneration project there.

Playtime again

Having come to a natural end on the project I was working on I’m having some time just playing. Sometimes I make a few prints just because of the ghost images that they make on the plate  which I want to use in creating another print. The prints I’m posting today here are like this

 

 

 

 

 

However I quite like the last print in this chain.

Final piece for this part of my identity project.

Can’t say that that is the catchiest title for this post, but it ‘does what it says on the tin’. For a while I’ve been thinking about the relationship between the mind and the body, and in this final piece I used large steel plates to make etchings based on a shadow cast on the ground. These are prints I made a short while ago.

 

 

Tomorrow I’ll be back to just playing with plates and ink again for a while as I take a bit of time to decide what direction I’m going in with my next project.

Printing the Zinc aquatint.

Printing zinc aquatint.

I find it odd the way that some plates which seem to work so well as proofs don’t look quite as good when you play with different ways of printing, yet some very  unpromising proofs work so much better. Printing is lilke that- you never can really tell what you’re going to get.

Same techniques but using Zinc

I quite liked the way that the aquatint plate has printed-so decided it was possibly worth remaking it in Zinc (which is very much more expensive to use) and using  combining it with more straight forward etching. This is the proof of the plate I made.

Printing my aquatint plate 2

Printing my aquatint plate 1

 

Adding an aquatint.

I wanted the drips to print better- so I decided I had to add an aquatint. Where I make my plates I used to be able to use the old fashioned type of aquatint where you use rosin which is heated onto the plate to give it a grain. Since the facilities moved to a shiny new building some of the old methods have been supplanted by the new- aquatint being one of them.

So now ‘aquatint’ is sprayed on from a can. It feels a bit clunky by comparison- often the old ways are the best.

This is proof of the plate I made

Trying my combined technique plate 3.

Trying my combined technique plate 2.

Trying my combined technique plate 1.