Print Collection 25-08-11

It feels like a long while since I’ve been down to the print studio. Picked up these prints today that were pulled on Tues. I’d just got some new fancy Charbonnelle printing ink and had a bit of a play rather than just trying to pull the perfect print each time. Its much more fun this way. Oddly doesn’t feel like you’re producing anything good at the time, but they seem to be growers. Enjoying playing with texture and tone, I’m going to forget about editioning and just get on with it…

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Print Collection 20-07-11

Its been a little while since I posted here, but now we’re back to business as usual. New house, new studio, new start. I picked up the etchings here from the last session down at Spike Print a couple of weeks ago.

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Still need to sort out a better way of photographing or scanning these prints, but that will come. Click thumbs below for full size view…

Bad Meaning Good. Print Collection 21-07-11

More practice = more better. Getting my print mojo working, had a much better session today. I’m looking to get an edition of around 6 good prints per plate. Very low numbers, but that’s the deal. The prints I picked up today are getting better, still refining the technique though. So much to learn. (Apologies for the poorly lit photos – moving house and office at the moment so only able to snap with a little point and shoot digi-cam. Normal service will be resumed soon)

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Todays lesson. Don’t overwet your paper – especially when using water soluble ink. I was getting these crazy (unwanted) textures and I couldn’t figure out what was causing it. But thanks to some sage advice I believe over-wetting was the problem. This didn’t happen in todays’ session so it looks like that’s the cause. You can see the problem below:

Not cool – especially when it takes a good 30mins to prepare the plate for it to fail at the last stage… and then do it again on the next print because you can’t work out what’s wrong :/ Click thumbs below for a closer look.

Intaglio Printing Step by Step Walk-through / Tutorial

Had my first full day down at Spike Print today, its great to finally start editioning prints after all the testing. I thought it’d be fun to post up the technique I am developing to render my Dry Point Etchings from Life Class. I’m determined to come up with something that no-one else is doing at the moment so I’ve been experimenting a lot with this method. Each print is individually hand-worked using the Artist Proof as a guide, so there is some variation from print to print. It takes a good half an hour from start to finish so its doubly gutting if it fails. By all means post comments if you have any questions about what I’m doing and I’ll be happy to answer.

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Step 1: Warm the dry point etching on a hot plate. This heats the metal so that the printing ink becomes more viscous when it is applied and seeps in the marks more easily.

Step 2: Ink the plate evenly from all directions using a scrap of mount board until the entire surface is covered with flat even tone.

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Spike Print 17-05-11

No prints to pick up tonight so I thought I’d snap a few shots while I was at the studio…

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Dry Point Intaglio Print Tests

Here’s my very first test proofs of the plates I talked about in my previous post on dry point etching here. I’ve just taken photos of them for the time being rather than scanning them, but when I’ve got my eye in a little more I’ll do some proper hi-res scans of the more finished articles. I didn’t realise that  you could make highlights with cotton buds on these plates, so it’ll be fun seeing what I get up to over the coming months as I learn about printing. It was a bit of a reality check to be honest – I’m as comfortable as could be etching plates, but I hadn’t quite twigged that printing is a skill in of itself that needs to be practised and learnt. Its, ummm… a bit more involved than just pressing the print button on the computer, natch. Hey ho – here’s what turned out, this is my very first test:

This next one was inked and highlighted by the person who was doing the 1 2 1 training at Spike Print, so I technically didn’t print it – but its certainly my plate. Incidentally both of these were drawn  at life drawing – I was very pleased with the plates as first stabs at etching live…

I see the potential with this one, will be good to see how these develop through the edition. The last one here was unfortunately the least successful, I was left to my own devices and ended up taking too much ink off the plate leaving a very washed out image. Its also a bit gutting as this was one that I took from an earlier life drawing from my sketchbook which I transferred at length to plate in (what I thought…) great detail. Turns out that my nice neat, shallow lines aren’t scored deep enough to print effectively. bums. heh ho. Lessons learnt with this plate.

Looking forward to carrying on my learnings…

 

Animation Classic No.6 ‘The Old Lady and the Pigeons’ by Sylvain Chomet

I just love this film. Its so deliciously twisted. Watch it, watch it, watch it! (It’s in 3 parts because of the youtubes, but good quality…

I first saw this at college learning animation at The Arts Institute, Bournemouth last millenium. Its so well observed, the pigeons are great as they flop and roll around. Its also completely bat-shit crazy. Sounds like they’ve done another pass on the score, I remember the old Beta tape copies that I watched had a much more raw feel to the soundtrack, more hand made, not so well produced. Still ace though. It’s been really interesting watching the progression through the Belleville Rendezvous and The Illusionist. Apparently it took 10 years to finish this film IIRC. Wonder what he’s up to next?

Animation Classic No.4 ‘The Big Snit’ by Richard Condie

Awww… A story of love, scrabble, sawing, electrocuted cats and Nuclear Armageddon! Its the Big Snit by Richard Condie produced by the National Film Board of Canada

I really enjoyed watching this again after so many years, its a lovely poignant thing – makes a nice change to all the whiz-bang that I’m used to nowadays. Enjoy!