Monday 15 February 2010

Saturday 13th February

Tried out my new oil based inks on Saturday. What a difference. The drying time is mach slower so you can work it longer and paint back into a plate that's been used over and over again to get more textural and gradiated effects.

Mixing the ink with linseed oil changes the quality again and makes it flow more easily.

I did some cats which are ok but I need to work out my colour schemes more which I will I be doing this week, I also need to absorb what I have learned and put it into practise next time. So I'm going to pause for a while.

What I can do in the meantime is try some of my still lifes but using oil inks and maybe smaller than A3 for a change.

At the start of my work on Saturday I tried messing around with blue circles in oil based ink to simulate water. The circles got smaller nearer the top of the paper to create recession. I then thought I could paint these over some orange gold fish and it would look like goldfish in a pond so I did some and put them to one side.

After about three hours on other work I had the idea to use gestural marks done in water based ink over the top of the oil based (because obviously it would resist the water) and to try to get that fluid feeling that you get with using very wet ink. I was pleased with the result which is quite abstract yet recognisable as fish in a pond. I have shown it here.

The colours worked really well and my learning from this is that I need to make better colour choises to get the most out of my ideas. I'm going to collect examples of great colour combinations from magazines and put them in my scrap book for reference.

Tuesday 9 February 2010

Pipped - Linocut by Dale Devereux Barker

Print Workshop - Saturday Morning 6th Feb, Ipswich

As a surprise birthday present my sister in law bought me a lino cut workshop. I was sceptical at first but it turned out to be one of the best birthday presents ever! The tutor was Dale Devereux Barker who is a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers amongst other things and he really knew his stuff.

He fined us £1 if we referred to the inks as 'paint' and used profesional lithographic printers inks which were very viscous and oil based. He showed us how to roller out the ink until it stopped making that sticky sound and became satin in appearance. We then applied the ink to blank blocks of lino and printed them on proper printing paper using a hand press. We then over printed using stencils made out of paper or found objects like feathers.

I was amazed at how precise the printed images of feathers were and how flat and even the printed colours were. Of course you can go on to use second generations of print from the same block or spray vegatable oil onto the block or contaminate it with talcum powder to give special textured effects too.

What made it all work, unlike my own attemps at home, was a subtle combination of using the right inks. in the right way, on the right paper and with the right press. I have to admit that I have been finding water based inks very frustrating as they dry too quickly and give a very poor quality print (unless that is the quality you want).

Also we worked very small, Dales view being that the larger you go the less consistensy you will acheive because most of the pressure from the press is in the centre. He showed us some of his own work done with lots of small, blocks combined to make a larger print and this is something I will try.

For the second half of the morning we worked on cutting the lino to produce images and then going back to the block and removing more lino and printing again in another colour. Reduction method.

I also found that where I had marked the lino with red felt pen it came out on the print and this is a technique I will use also.

Following the course I tried to get some oil based inks from an art shop and managed to get a small tin of White. I have since tracked down the supplier and ordered five more colours.

I tried buying some professional lithographic ink from a company I tracked down on Google but they seemed almost reluctant to sell it to me saying it probably wouldn't dry if I didn't use a proper printing press! I find this hard to beleive and have contacted Dale to find out who he gets his inks from.

Dale suggested that I get in touch with print firms in the Watford area where I live and ask if I can dive into the skip that they throw their empty print tubs into. Apparently they usually leave quite useable amounts in them and this could be a useful source of free ink. So I'm off to Watford Printers Ltd.

I'm also going to get some proper printing paper from John Purcell Paper in Stockwell as I feel the extra fine and shiny, brilliant white cartridge paper I have been using is probably hindering my efforts.

I don't think the printing I have done so far has been wasted, I just think I should be aware of the characteristics of both water based and oil based inks and use both, in combination if necessary, where a prticular effect is required.

I've posted some of Dales work here as I like it very much.

Tuesday 2 February 2010

Christmas Period

I finally got down to some more printing over the extended break and have managed about two hours a day on about seven occasions with gaps in between. The problem is also that I have to work in a shed in the garden which has no electricity so I either have to be on holiday or do it at the weekend. Learning a new skill is always frustrating to start with and progress seems slow.

I started with mark making experiments applying the paint to the plate with a variety of objects and varying the consistency with medium. I am working almost exclusively in A3 as I don't want to feel cramped and frankly I think anything less than A4 at this stage just wouldn't work. I am begining to gain some understanding of the ways you can create a textured effect with monoprints.

I am also learning that the white area where there is no paint is as expressive as the area with paint and to plan for these negative shapes and negative textural qualities.

From exercises I moved on to still lifes of a wooden bowl, an orange and an aluminium jug and I did about fifteen or more of these just to explore the feel of the medium more and to grasp how to convey an image.

I find that working with the limitations of monoprint and playing to it's strengths as a medium is the best way to get results. It doesn't work if you impose on it, the accidents are often the best bits and recreating them so that they are not accidents is probably the key!

I experimented with templates drawn in pencil and placed under the plate as a guide and to help register subsequent applications of paint and this was a useful technique. I also did some drawings in indian ink with a stick from a template and then using the same template monprinted over the top. I could of course have just drawn over the monoprint but this didn't occur to me and anyway I liked the effect I got from the accidental mis registration.

I did several versions of these 'line and wash' images trying to develop low tonal key colour schemes that worked sensitively with each other. I made colour notes in my note book for later use.

Tone is a consideration and I have mainly kept to low tonal keys of broken textural nature with white paper breaking through. I probably need to try some of these but with an over print of solid darker paint in some areas. To be frank I am getting bored with oranges, jugs and bowls so I'm going to move on to a different subject.

I saw a birthday card done in watercolour of a cat trying to get a fish out of a pond. It was one cat shaped splodge for the cat with another slightly violet splodge for the shadow and white bits of paper left to denote the cat's white paws and face. I've done some sketches, photos and watercolours of my own cat with a view to doing something similar as a monoprint. I'll probably do quite a lot of them until I get it right.

Hopefully my next post will include some pics of this work.