This year seems to be flying past, without me finding/making time to blog about what I'm doing. I have a long list of things to blog about!
First, some practical stuff. I'm always interested in finding new ways to make marks on fabric, so I've been really interested the prints that some artists are getting, using PVC foam board as their printing plate. Most aren't printing on fabric, though, and I think many are using oil-based printing media.
So I wanted to see how well a foam board printing plate would print with my water-based medium, and how it printed on fabric.
First, what am I actually talking about? It's not foam core, which has a paper surface (though I did call it that when I first used it back here). It's not polystyrene sheet, like you get in packaging around large appliances or in fruit and vegetable boxes. This is compressed PVC sheet, which is quite a rigid sheet. It's gradually replacing corflute in advertising signs and it's also used as an insulating sheet in buildings. These days, you can buy it in fine thicknesses and small sizes at art shops, as it's often used in mounting work, but that's the expensive method. I bought mine as a 1200 x 600 x 6mm sheet from a hardware chain, after a lot of walking to and fro and asking people. Sometimes it's with MDF board, sometimes with corflute, sometimes off by itself in a dark corner. I think that size should be plenty for sampling, don't you?
Why use this medium? It carves nicely but blunts tools in short order, so be prepared to sharpen and resharpen, if you plan to cut it like lino. However, it impresses beautifully, so I use different tools completely. My favourite is a set of tools for working polymer clay..
...supplemented by a set of ball point scribers.
If you wanted to keep it cheap, you could probably begin with an old biro or two, maybe with thicker and finer points.
My first plate was a little reference sheet for the first set of tools - only about 15cm x 7.5cm (6in x 3in). I won't show you the samples, but I wanted to see what kinds of lines I could get from each kind of tool and how useful it was for this process. Then I turned the plate over and drew a freehand design on the back, using the different tools in the ways I thought would be most effective.
My first prints were simple relief ones; basically just inking the plate with a roller and Permaset inks and printing onto dry cartridge paper with my baren.
I was happy with these - there's some good detail and reasonably good coverage.
Some of the lines on the plate were very deep, and over time ink built up in those incisions. As I needed to clean the plate anyway, I wondered if I could lift out that colour by changing the medium's texture. I sprayed the plate with water and printed the results.
All are really ghost prints, as I didn't add any more medium.
How interesting! This is a different look entirely. I was still using my baren and this is much better results than I've ever had from this technique without a press.
I experimented with damp paper but the results weren't markedly different. I think it would probably make a difference if I added more colour in a thicker medium over the top, as spritzing the plate tends to make relief prints spotty.
I always print while I'm cleaning the plate because I usually get interesting results. This time, the results blew me away.
This looks almost like a watercolour painting.
I wondered, can I add colour more specifically, rubbing it into the plate, wiping back and adding more colour, spritzing and then printing?
Yes, it looks like I can have a lot of control over colour. The trade-off is in loss of fine detail and colour intensity.
Hmm, I think this approach offers a lot of possibilities!
I've been printing things lately and having a ball, as usual.
Printing is my first love. It's not the first creative thing I learnt how to do. That honour goes to knitting, which I learnt to do at age 7 (remember these squares that I blogged about back here?), closely followed by hand embroidery. I did my first printing at high school and I loved it. Unfortunately, I had an art teacher who regarded printmaking as a lesser form of art and you were nothing if you couldn't draw or paint. That doesn't mean he actually taught us anything about drawing or painting... but I digress.
I spent a lot of time as a young mum screen printing things, although I didn't have much money to spend on art stuff back then. Then, after a break when I was studying, I moved into quilting. If you are one of the three people who follow my blog, you'll have noticed that printmaking of various kinds has been slowly creeping back.
My first printing this year was simple intaglio, something I've wanted to try for a long time. Intaglio is a process more often used in engraving or etching. Rather than inking the printing surface, you want to get ink down inside the hollows of your printing surface. So printing involves getting your paper or fabric down into those hollows, which, on paper at least, gives a sort of embossed effect as well. I'd read about a two-colour method, in which you put your first colour down into the hollows of the printing surface and then add a second colour to the part you'd normally print from with stamps or similar.
I used a stamp I'd made a while back, by drawing on a polystyrene meat tray with biro. So easy! I figured if it worked this this very shallow stamp, it would work with any of the surfaces I print from. Fibrecircle is currently working on the theme of Trees ,so I was killing two birds with one stone.
I used acrylic paint, since I was working on cartridge paper and just mucking about, and hey, I had them out anyway for something else. My first prints were on dry paper.
I painted the stamp with a sponge brush and red acrylic paint, and then wiped the surface clean with a soft rag. The only red was down in the hollows. Then I painted yellow acrylic paint over the top, trying to stay away from the hollows. I laid the paper over the top and used my baren and my fingers to work it down into the hollows.
Obviously, there was some mixing of colours, especially in the first print. The second print was more successful. Then I tried diluting the yellow paint, so it was runnier that the red. Wow! The colour is quite pale but the effect is more like I was imagining.
The second set of prints were on damp paper. I expected better results, because it's much easier to get the paper down into the hollows. And yes, I got clearer results.
The first image was using paint with the same viscosity. The second has the runnier yellow paint, and there's a lot less colour mixing.
I think diluting the second colour less would still be effective and I'd get stronger colour.
I want to try this now with other media. I'm playing around a lot with thickened dye, because I love the way it goes onto fabric and I'm enjoying the challenge of working with transparent media. I've done that a lot with paint, but my past screen printing has mostly used opaque media when colours were likely to interact.
This was just a little moment of playing away from the many things I *should*be doing. My later printmaking has been a little more on task.
