Today’s Printmaking session started off a bit rubbish, but went on to improve somewhat. I seem to be relearning what I’ve already learned – remembering to leave plenty white space, for example – as initially today’s prints were ill-defined at best.
In the above prints I returned to the technique of brushing the ink onto the plate (glass) but this time I used dampened paper to get as much of the ink as possible from the plate and onto the paper. Here I have used smooth Zerkal 120gsm paper and a textured Fabriano paper 250gsm.
I decided that the black background was far too heavy and opted for the lighter terracotta colour instead. But here I wish I’d left some white areas on the elephant so that it could be more easily recognized as such, rather than a peanut butter coloured splodge.
I had a break and returned, determined to pull something of value out of the morning’s work. The following prints were done on A3 photocopier paper. My intention was to produce masks from photocopies of my initial sketch:
These copies I placed onto the back of the A3 copier paper as it sat on the lightly ink rolled plate and I have then drawn onto the photocopy to produce backdrawn outlines of the design:
These I intend to build upon using layers and by masking areas using cutouts from the photocopies of my sketch.
Manyana.
Maureen Walker's Introduction to Printmaking Blog 