Co-Worker Owl!

This will belong to a lovely co-worker of mine in a few hours! I am super excited to give it to her!

I'm alive!

I assure you, I have not been waiting to pick up my prints for two months. I just haven't taken pictures yet! I know, I know.. I'm slacking. I've been busy though. My internship at The Ohio Department of Insurance has been keeping me on my toes and I just finished the first week of my screen printing mini-mester class. I've also been doodling/painting almost every day. This has actually been the most productive summer I've had in a long time. Hooray! So! I will post some images of my productivity very soon! I promise it won't take two months.

Waiting...

I turned in all 20 prints last Thursday to the lovely Ms. Kathy McGhee. I owe everything I know about printmaking to that lady! She's fantastic. I am going to pick them up from her tomorrow afternoon and I will actually post a few more photos of my prints.

Early to wake, early to bed?

Early to wake, early to bed. That is definitely not the case with this evening. I will be printing the night away. I am going to addition previous plates I have worked on earlier in the semester. I am going to continue experimenting with papers. I have a lot of thinner papers that cannot be soaked in water so instead of soaking them, I think I'm going to try to just lightly spray them with water. I believe it should work.

Also, I will be working on a collagraph. A collagraph is essentially a collage plate. It's created by attaching materials such as string, sand, cardboard, leaves, flowers, and other textural things to a piece of masonite.

Experimenting with papers.

I've been printing all morning. I feel a little better because I was feeling a little behind. I completed 7 prints total and I feel like I just worked out or something. Standing and constantly running around the room. It was a good thing no one was there or I think I could have scared someone.

I experimented with a lot of different kinds of paper. Cooler tones versus warmer tones. The kind of paper you print on can make a huge difference on the mood of a print. With my elephant, I liked printing on cooler gray toned paper. I was using a very neutral blue-green ink tone and the cooler paper really set the mood. The print is supposed to make you sad so a cooler paper is probably a better choice. Warmer toned paper generally seem a little more cheerful and I'm not going for a cheerful print. However, I did print on a warmer paper. I still like it, but I prefer the cooler gray.

The early bird gets the print?

There is definitely something special about waking up at 5 in the morning to work in the printmaking labs. By special, I mean the lab is empty because no one in the right mind gets up that early to work on printmaking. I did though and it was really nice. I didn't have anyone looking over my shoulder and I had so much space to work!

This morning I had a great idea to make my elephant print a little more interesting. It's a technique called chine collé. Chine collé is a french term that translates tissue paste. That almost sums the technique up in the simplest of terms. I cut out a piece of tissue paper to block out a certain color in my print. I then mix wheat paste and apply it to the side that will paste to my print paper. After I ink up my plate, I carefully lay the small pieces of tissue on my plate. Then I arrange my paper on top of the plate and send it through the press.

This is my copper plate after I painted out my edges and elephant with asphaltum. The plate was ready to start it's aquatint. I took it down to the spray booth and turned on the vents and sprayed out the center most portion of the composition like so:



I placed my plate in the acid bath and I mistakingly left it in for about 9 hours. I went home to finish some laundry and found myself laying down. I kept telling myself that I'd wake up in an hour or so to take my copperplate out. That obviously did not happen. I woke up at exactly 2 in the morning and that is the exact time the printmaking labs close. The acid ate away at the open areas hard.



I'm kind of happy it happened though.