I started the day by looking at yesterday’s notes. The most successful print so far has been the following:

The gold ink did not register very well though. Also, I am having trouble learning to line up the paper with the edge of the plate so that it is central and with parallel margins on each side.

For today, I have been using purple, orange and green oil based ink. I brushed this onto the same copper plate marked with a black Sharpie pen.

My first print was promising, though the colour combinations appeared a little toxic. However, I had unfortunately missed an area down to the right hand side of the plate (on the left of the print in front of the Buddha’s head). This gave a weird misshapen look to the print. I decided, the next time I drew this still life, I would line up the box with the edge of the print plate. Seems obvious to me now. Doh.

I brushed ink onto the missed area, then took a ghost print:

The ghost print would have been ok, only I inadvertently picked up an errant spot of green ink, thereby spoiling the print.

This third attempt perhaps taught me the most about colour, contrast and tone. From this print, I later drew the following thumbnail:

I shall return to this tomorrow with renewed vigour, having learned these important points:

• Remember to leave blank /white areas for effective contrast
• Use bold/complementary colour choices
• Be selective in inking areas that are “key” such as shadows and necessary outlines.
• Keep work area, gloves and hands very clean
• Make angles approximate to plate edge actually line up with the edge of the print plate

Not a bad days effort – though I’ve yet to produce a print I’m really happy with. But after today I feel I will at least have achieved that aim by the end of this week.

I thought I’d start by drawing the desired image onto the clean copper plate using a black sharpie. Then paint the ink (oil based this time) in turquoise, pink and gold instead of purple, green and gold. Yesterday’s “purple” looked rather blue and was too close to green on the colour wheel for my liking. However, I liked the textured effect of brush marks on the copper plate.

I stuck with the same selection of objects – the Buddha’s head, with the sculpture of a singer. As the pine cone appeared to have been omitted from yesterday’s efforts in water based ink, I tried to make more of a feature of it in today’s. I had thought I may make a substitution for something else entirely.

I drew a design onto the plate with a black sharpie, as follows:

It feels a bit like cheating, doing it this way. I still feel slightly trepidatious attempting a print. It’s as though I’m taking some kind of a risk. The overall feeling is one of experimentation and the excitement that brings. But there is also an underlying fear that the act of “play” does not equate to a “proper job” or “real work”.

Given the luxury of extra drying time in using oil based instead of water based inks, I took advantage of this by attempting more detail in painting onto the plate.

The resulting print, though not centred correctly on the paper (or in fact on the right side of a textured paper) is nevertheless a vast improvement on yesterday’s rather hurried attempt:

I cleaned the ink from the plate using vegetable oil. Happily, my sharpie pen marks were only slightly less defined, therefore tomorrow I shall attempt a further experiment.

Looking back at my last post, I notice the colour of the photograph of the inked plate and realise that blue, orange (copper colour) and greenish-gold or turquoise, would look rather effective together. I think at the very least I may deepen the pink of the background to more of a salmon pink.

Looking at the equipment list at the start of the monoprint section, I see I have most, if not all of the items already. All I need do is select my items for a still life.

For this Exercise, I chose items that had relevance emotionally as well as being interesting forms. I chose a sculpture of a singer which my sister had created for my last birthday; a framed photo of my partner which was taken whilst out walking in some woods; and a pine cone which represents my enjoyment of the countryside. These I arranged on an old table I had used as a painting palette. This which was scuffed and marked with paint splodges and coffee rings.

After some consideration I decided to replace the hard edged photo frame with a Buddha head which my brother had rescued from a skip one day on his way to visit me. I found this object to be more sympathetic and complementary with the other two remaining items.

I had prepared two pieces of perspex for this experiment, but I wasn’t completely happy with the edges of these as they were rather irregular. I wanted nice crisp straight edges to my print so used some copper plate I’d forgotten I had which I found languishing in the bottom of a drawer.

I chose my three colours – bluish purple, gold and green. The first print I took from the inked plate barely registered on the newsprint as the ink had dried before I could lay the paper on top.

I reapplied the ink and took a second proof. This was an improvement, but I feel that I will use oil based ink next time as it is slower to dry. However, the test prints were useful in that I was able to see the effects of the brush stroke textures and imagine how this method could be effectively manipulated to interesting effect.

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I think I shall also choose more complementary colours for the next experiment. Perhaps gold, turquoise and pink. Also, the paper could have been more central and level on the print plate. But I am pleased that I managed to avoid leaving smudges or finger marks around the edge of the paper. I had taken the advice to wear gloves which I cleaned between occasions of touching either the plate or the paper using sanitizing gel. This seemed to work rather well.