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.

Test Success!

Yes, so I made the huge mistake of leaving my plate in the acid bath way too long. I was very scared that it ruined my plate. I still went on to continue adding aquatint to the elephant's skin. I thought it'd be a good idea to test print my plate before I make anymore progress or spend extra time on it.

The printing process is a precise practice. I start with heating up the hot plate and placing my copper plate on it so it will be easier to spread the ink across it. I card on the ink with little rectangular mat board pieces. I do it again to get the excess ink off of it. I get a dried out cheese cloth, tarletan, and wipe off more excess ink. Then, I give it a few quick swipes with my hand. I place my plate on the press bed and since I'm just testing this plate, I spray a piece of newsprint paper down quickly with water. I carefully lay the newsprint over the plate. My plate is ready to be sent through the press after I make sure the press is set correctly. I crank the lever and the bed slowly moves and goes through the press. I was extremely anxious to see how my test print was going to turn out. When it is finished going through the press, I carefully remove the blankets and lift the newsprint to examine my test print. To my surprise, it was a complete success! The background held the ink just fine. It was very dark though.

I am so excited that my test print turned out. That means I can confidently move forward. I need to have more than one color in this print so I am going to try an intaglio technique called chin cole. I will soak red pieces of tissue paper and when I'm ready to print, cut pieces in the shapes of certain objects/things on the plate that I wish to be in color. It is a pretty simple way of adding color.

Extreme Accidental Etching.

It's been a very hectic week. I have been completely exhausted. I was working very late in the printmaking lab and I painted out the elephant and frame in asphaltum. I spray painted them to add texture. I wanted the background to be very dark so I had planned on leaving my copper plate in the acid bath for about two hours. I thought about staying at school for those two hours but I decided to take advantage of the little chunk of time and drive home to do some laundry. I also wanted to go to the grocery store. I put my clothes in the washer and after that I decided to lay down. Before I realized it, I fell asleep. I woke up around 2am which was no good because all of the labs on campus close at 2am. When my eyes met the time on my cell phone, my heart dropped and I lost my breath for a moment. At that time, my plate had been in the bath for about four hours. Since the school closed though, I wasn't able to pull my plate out of the bath for another five hours. Luckily, I was only etching the background. I am worried about how the background will hold ink. The etching is so deep into the plate. I'm just not sure how it will turn out. I know I can say it will definitely be dark.

Born To Be Free...

There are only 28 days to get my projects finished for my intaglio printmaking class. There are five projects that will be due. We have to have four prints for each project. You could say that the pressure is on. I have two of the five projects finished from the beginning of the semester. I am only halfway in to two of the three remaining projects. One of those two projects is a sail boat tackling the ferocious sea and the other one is an old, wrinkled elephant with a tired face. The elderly elephant belongs to the circus and is performing. Below the elephant is a banner that reads "Born to be free" which is ironic because the poor elephant has never been free and only knows the circus.

I need to come up with another concept for the third print. There is very little time before the semester ends. My stomach is beginning to feel topsy turvy.

Aquatic Aquatint.

My line work is all etched into my plate. If I inked it up right now, It would just print my line work and there would be no tone or texture it. That's no fun and basically just a page from a coloring book. Aquatint is a technique to add texture and tone. There are two different ways to adding an aquatint. One way is to sprinkle powdered resin to the plate after the plate has been heated. The plate has to be heated so the resin melts and clings. After this, you immerse the plate in the acid bath so the acid bites the areas not covered by the resin. It creates a porous ground of tone. The longer I leave the plate in the acid bath, the darker the tone will be.

Etching the night away...

My image has been transferred onto my copper plate perfectly. I have been drawing over the lines into the hard ground with a few different tools that I briefly mentioned in my last post. I'm using a burin, a scribe, and a mechanical pencil. I am scratching away the hard ground and exposing the copper below it. After I am finished drawing out my image, I am going to spray paint the back of my plate with an opaque and smooth black spray paint. I am going to submerge the plate in an acid batch and I may want to use the back of the plate for a future project so I want to take care of it and not damage it too much. Not to mention saving the back of the plate would also save me a couple bucks and who isn't a fan of that? I put the plate in the bath of acid because the acid bites the line work into the plate. It eats at the hard ground a little but the hard ground is acid resistant so only the line work will be cut into the plate.

The acid bath is a little intimidating because it's a bath of acid and very dangerous. I am a little unintentionally careless at times and that is not so good around an acid bath. I have accidentally flicked acid into my eyes. It was not a very pleasant feeling to say the least. One interesting thing was I got to actually see the emergency eye flusher in action up close and personal.

Decisions, Decisions...

It's been a very nice easter weekend but I need to figure out what I am going to do for my next print. I have been doodling here and there. I want to put together a giant series of the mustached owl that documents the many adventures through his life but I'm feeling a bit nautical right. I have drawn a little boat with sails on the open sea that I like so I think that's going to be my next print project. The first step to turning this doodle into an intaglio print is to trace it onto tracing paper with a pencil that has soft, dark lead. The reason for tracing it with a soft, dark pencil is because I want to transfer it onto my copper plate. My copper plate has been sanded, cleaned, and I've melted dry hard ground onto it. (Hard ground=asphaltum, beeswax, and resin. It's pretty smelly.) To transfer my image, I will lay my copper plate face up and tape my sketch on tracing paper face down over my copper plate on the press bed. I have to make sure it is perfectly in the correct position then I crank the handle and send it through the press. If I did it correctly, my image should be transferred and I'll be able to scratch in the line work with my scribe or just a mechanical pencil.

This will probably take a good little while so I better get cracking.

Introducing...

"Without a Car(e)"

This is one of my first intaglio proofs on pearl grey stonehenge paper. It is far from perfect or being a final. I am just very happy with it because it is a successful proof. I wanted it to have the feeling of an old photograph so I mixed a warm sepia tone-esque ink. It was difficult at first because I forgot that it is best to soak your paper in water for at least an hour before printing. If you don't, the print will absolutely not turn out. It kind of looks like the vague image you want except it's smudgy and gross. So, I learned my lesson and soaked the paper.

The beginning.

This semester I am taking an intaglio printmaking class. For those who may not know what "intaglio" is, let me begin with a somewhat simple definition from the ever so wonderful Wikipedia.

"Intaglio (pronounced /ɪnˈtælioʊ/ in-TAL-ee-oh) is a family of printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface, known as the matrix or plate. Normally, copper or zinc plates are used as a surface, and the incisions are created by etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint or mezzotint. Collographs may also be printed as intaglio plates. To print an intaglio plate, ink is applied to the surface and then rubbed with tarlatan cloth to remove most of the excess. The final smooth wipe is often done with newspaper or old public phone book pages, leaving ink only in the incisions. A damp piece of paper is placed on top and the plate and paper are run through a printing press that, through pressure, transfers the ink from the recesses of the plate to the paper." Wikipedia.

To say the least, it is an extremely intensive process. I have enjoyed it very much so far. I am just dipping my feet in right now. I am getting a feel and understanding of all the possibilities and different techniques within this process. It's also a very messy process too. Many drippy, smelly, clothes staining chemicals need to be used. Some of these wonderful chemicals include asphaltum, acid, inks, and others. I have stained many favorite shirts, sweaters, and jeans. Terrible and sad losses but for a good cause. I have to keep telling myself that. I'm sure that there will be more casualties.

Stay tuned.