Printmaking again

I made some prints on the theme of façade as preliminary thinking for the 2016 ATASDA Palm House exhibition. They didn't take me where I wanted to go but I learnt some stuff.

This print is Permaset printing inks on cartridge paper, as a test for what the plate looked like. Although it's not a great print, I like the feel of it.
 

This one was made with the same medium really wet and I love it. It's all moody and mysterious, which was not actually what I wanted for my particular part of the collaborative work but would have been fine alone, if it were a bigger print (it's A5).

Then there was this one on fabric. Same medium on off-white quilters' muslin. It's a three colour print, using deep pink, cream and emerald green. I was trying to create depth and shadows, to get the light falling strongly from above and to see whether repeat prints would give a better colour on cloth than I was getting with single prints.

It was one of those prints when everything just goes right. The registration method worked wonderfully. The fabric was nicely controlled by ironing freezer paper on the back, so it was more like paper to handle. The consistency of the medium was fine and it didn't dry out too much, something that has been happening with my Permaset inks over summer. The colour is more subtle than I 'd hoped, so it wouldn't work for the collaborative piece, and the small scale makes the fairly fine thread count of the cloth more of an element that I'm used to seeing.

But it made me go, "ah, I really like that", and that's exactly why we do this stuff, isn't it?

Printmaking #1

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!

Making print plates 1

A few weeks ago, I had a playday with my friend Claire, making printing plates of various kinds. She brought along her little press, which was fun to worth with, although we didn't actually get time to print with it. But it didn't go unused!

The first print plates were made using the press. We had some various weights of foam core board to experiment with. The idea was to lay firm items on the foam core and run it through the press to create impressions in the board.

Here's one that Claire did, about to go through the press.

This was my print plate which was made with string, mesh and other disparate objects. I added some drawn elements into the foam core, to emphasise the shapes emerging, which were vaguely reminiscent of a pond scene.

 

I printed the plate with black Permaset printing inks on cartridge paper, using by turns my baren, a spoon and fingers. This is the best of the half-dozen prints:

 

 

Nothing special, huh? I found that the water-based printing inks really didn't much like the shiny surface of the foam core - I think oil-based inks print better but I choose not to use them. It's also pretty clear to me that this kind of print plate really needs a press to work successfully. Better paper would help but I wasn't going to waste my little stash of good paper, if I couldn't get a better test print than this on cartridge paper.

 

A few days later, I did a second set of prints using my marble rolling pin. I like this method on small prints, as it allows for fairly even pressure over the surface of the plate, akin to small press printing. Sometimes I get really great results.

I deliberately chose some printing ink that was ever so slightly stiff, as I thought that might help with the tack problems on the foam core. It really didn't improve matters so I wasn't getting good coverage on the plate.  But it did give me some interesting results. I quite like this one, as it looks a bit misty. I have a few of these misty ones, so I might experiment with other techniques to work on them further.

 

I kept experimenting with the tackiness of the medium as I continued printing. I did get some prints with better coverage, although they are paler due to the addition of base medium and water.

 

After I'd been printing for a while, I went too far with the medium, made it a bit too runny and really over-inked the plate. I did several pulls to clean it. However, that actually worked in my favour. How often have I decided printing really isn't working out today, only to do a couple of final pulls that make it all worthwhile?

 

This is the second print from the over-inked plate...

 
... and this is a monotype from the first print from the plate, which looked like a completely blue page, with no details at all. (That's why it's reversed compared to all the others.)

 

 I really like these as prints. The runny inks have given them a texture and depth that was mostly lacking in the other prints. Not especially like the plate but interesting.

 

I've done some stuff with some of the other prints from this plate, which I'll post about after I finish talking about the other plates I made.

 

You can see Claire's much better results on one of her foam core plates, using oil-based inks, on her blog.