Tutor Report from 9th September 2010


Tutor Report Form

Student name: Simon Allard
Student number: 487150
Course/Module title: Printmaking 1
Assignment number: 1 - Monoprints

Overall Comments
Simon, you’ve produced a vast amount of work for this first assignment and it’s great to see such enthusiasm and confidence shining through within the work, well done! It would be really useful in your learning log on your Internet blog to title each project as a link* so it’s easy to find your notes and thoughts on how each project has gone – your own critique of what you’ve achieved at each stage. Reflect on things that have been a success and things that you might want to work on further to make improvements, as well as discussing where your ideas have come from and where you might see them going.
* This is a really useful idea
Feedback on assignment

Project 1

Your early prints show a great variety of experimental marks and textures, some controlled and others quite spontaneous. Using brushes and dabbers to make marks is ideal, but there are many other mark-making tools* you could use to create interesting patterns and surfaces. Changing the consistency of your ink*Will definately do this can always add another dimension, whether using water or a medium – some mediums will increase transparency, some can make the ink thicker and tackier.
Your preparation for you still life studies is full of good observational drawings and photos. You have used pastel, pen and watercolour– using different mediums encourages you to see what can happen to a composition and the subject depending on how you use your materials; excellent practice that can feed into the working process of making prints, especially monotypes. There are some beautiful studies f your still life; I’m assuming the inks you have used are waterbased; they seem to have that quality, and have worked well with the brush techniques you have used. There could be little more contrast between light and dark in the tones and opacity of the ink you have applied. I think a mixture of thin and thick brush strokes could help differentiate certain areas of the composition too. The thick paper has worked well, absorbing you ink well and leaving good clean edges. It’s interesting to see some subtle differences in the overall finish when you print on the off-white paper, which is a little smoother in it’s finish. It’s well worth pursuing the use of a variety of papers*Action, research and buy variety of papers. Great Art mail order has a great selection at an affordable price. The studies of the bowl on it’s own are good practice; you have begun to think about shadows and trying to use light and dark areas to create a sense of 3rd dimension. The 4th and final study reveals far more contrast and a good sense of space and depth of field is taking shape due to your use of colour. A change in the direction of your marks and brush strokes will continue to help with this, and even a stark difference in surface detail, like running a fork through the ink *will do this to create the background in the yellow, or adding some pattern to the table that the objects are sat on.
I love your drawing style and skills shown beautifully in your cat studies. The looseness but accuracy are super, and lend themselves well to the discovery of positive and negative shape, space and form. The four subsequent mono-prints show a confident scale and the fact that the cat takes up nearly the entire picture plane makes for a strong bold image. The oil-based inks you have stated you’ve used here have display a richness of colour. This is particularly evident in your first print where the blue base sits against the shape of the cats legs, be they black or white, allowing for the cat itself to stand out. The light background therefore recedes and the cat is painted with a variety of strokes to try and depict the texture of its coat. The linseed oil you have used in varying degrees with the other prints has shown you how you can create different effects through thinning the ink out, although I think it would work best being as matt as possible with just a few marks throughout legs and body showing the nature of the fur. You have really planned your use of colour well; purples and blues complement the yellow well – a variation on tones of these colours could be useful too. Your later studies in portrait format are beautiful – the very fact that there is a small white border surrounding the print actually brings the whole print to life, making it jump of the paper and giving strength and structure to all the shapes and colours you have used. The shadow effect is interesting, and the application of the ink is more solid in this print, but the turquoise does seems to take over a little*I agree, perhaps a different colour would have sat between with the softness of the yellow and purple. The cat has been bought to life more with your experiments in ink application, defining black and white areas, and adding some drawn marks into the eye areas. Sometimes the second generation print or the ‘ghost print’ can be more interesting than the first, and through then adding a little more ink to certain areas to darken, or taking ink away to lighten helps a great deal. The final print where you have added some surface pattern and texture in another colour is lovely – again a white border could work to great effect here.
There are some super textures and play on colour and shape with the tool prints. You are beginning to explore the endless possibilities and focus on how you can manipulate the ink on the plate’s surface using brushes and card. The softness of the third print here is lovely – very painterly and full of contrast and texture.
The fish prints that combine both oil and waterbased inks are interesting in that they offer a very soft fabric-like appeal and finish. The loose notion of the fish and the whole movement throughout these prints works very well.

Project 2
It’s really useful to see your notes throughout on these prints, and the initial life-drawing studies of are great influence for the producing these stencil prints. As you can see the ghost prints can be just as interesting if not more than the first print. I’m not sure this shape is the most effective out of your numerous sketches – it reminds me of a gorilla!! But you have made good use of the stencils and produced a good set of positive and negative prints. My favourite being the second negative print in blue where there is a defined outline to the shape and stippled bobbling effect around the edge…a happy accident using the nature of this process to it’s full! You’ve then fulfilled project three’s brief and used these stencils to make two-colour prints. Sometimes off-centering the stencil to allow for the white space behind acting as a halo can give some good results, playing with an illusion of space, shape and depth. I’m not sure the colours contrast enough to do the shapes justice, except for the yellow and green print.

Project 3
Yes I can now see a boxer! Your pen drawings reflect your ideas here for defining shapes found within the bodies of boxers and your chosen cut masks make good use of geometric cuts alongside soft, rounded, organic ones. Blue and pink contrast well, but I think the application of the blue could be a little more uniform to ensure the pink stands out. I notice a few hand drawn scratches* I will do more that you had added around the figure shape – great idea for further textural experiments. I thin you have ‘back-drawn’ over one of the prints in yellow, and the soft blotchy texture within the figure, allowing for some white to show through makes the subject come forward and the blue background recede. The pink, yellow and blue print is a little confusing and busy on the eye – the pink is not strong enough to really hold itself and doesn’t really add anything to the other colours. The use of three colours though is well worth pursuing; why not try 4 or 5! The blue drawn marks in the ink surrounding the yellow figure compare well with the flatness of the yellow figure. The print using a black background and stencil figure filled with brown and yellow pattern is really strong. It could be dancer too, and the atmosphere of the print beings to change due to massive contrast between light and dark tones alongside the energy seen in your marks* I need to reflect on this, there is a serious learning point in here which I probably won't understand until I do it. The textures in your back-drawn study next to this one remind me of subtle layers of scrunched up tissue paper; there is a nice feel to this overall effect, however the shape of the stencil has been lost somewhat. To retrieve it you would have to over print in a much darker, more opaque tone, but one that would sit well with those already existing – a red or a green maybe.

Project 4
There’s more than enough work here Simon – I’ve never seen so much for one project, but it’s very evident how much you have enjoyed this aspect of the assignment, with it’s free and experimental nature. Getting to grips with the limitless possibilities of producing mono-prints takes time, effort and patience and you are certainly getting somewhere! The prep work for the barn prints is very well planned and your colour swatches show you are looking to try and create a ‘feel’ and a mood. The stencil idea for the barn rafters is quite a mammoth task, whereas the tractor is a far more approachable! You have managed to bring these two elements and themes together, printing with contrasting colours, blue and yellow. These prints would benefit from ‘in-fills’ of other colours, working almost like a block print. The following print though, showing just the tractor and a few vertical beams is super – the lines in the orange generate texture and the overall registration is good here. This could be added to using some back-drawing techniques, perhaps to fill in some detail within the tractor*yes I see what you mean.
The horse studies are plentiful – have you seen Franz Marc’s*who is Franz Marc? research, paintings of horses? Your use of colour has an expressive and at times explosive quality in these prints. They are soft and subtle again, with a layering effect that allows for the contrast between flat areas of colour and overprints of texture and pattern. The colours in your final print here in this series; orange background and blue/black horse shapes are beautiful. It has an aged, rusty and ethereal feel to it.
Monoprints in the spirit of Turner – not easy to achieve if then using a very representational theme of a portrait, but I can see what you were trying to achieve. Your first pages of studies, with cutout examples of printed sections show a good use of texture and marks, along with color. You are right to suggest that here there isn’t enough subtlety in the colours you have used. The skull prints are not full of life like your previous prints have been. The stencil itself though is interesting to see, having been printed over during a previous print run. The Joe Strummer prints are great – even though you’d had been aiming not to produce so recognizable, but allow for some freely drawn, luminous effects. These prints are loose and luminous in their own way, without a doubt. It’s like looking through a window or a veil, where some areas are obscured and not all is as it seems. The play on perception and illusion is good here, as you have pushed the boundaries by bringing together a variety of monoprint techniques and processes. It’s interesting to see you manipulating the inks and brushes using water and turning the stencil over to reveal a whole new print, the back drawing into is great. It reminds me of a negative piece of photographic film. Your favourite is mine too – the luminosity is brighter here in the yellow; colours merge and come in and out of focus…. very much like Turners paintings do.
The silhouettes are very strong – the subject says it all, but the simplicity of form and composition speaks volumes. The colours of purple, orange, red and yellow burst forth, yet sit quietly in the background, allowing the black figures to take up the foreground. You have applied the ink with a thinness and transparency necessary for the evocative atmosphere of this image. The later prints don’t have quite the same feel, but the soft halo stencil print is interesting; perhaps a sense of horizon and background in this could bring it together.
This body of work is a superb start to the course Simon, and I can’t wait to see your second assignment! Very well done, keep up the excellent work.

Learning logs/critical essays
Making notes and observations on some of your prints and drawings throughout seems to work very well, but if you want to keep some prints as best I suggest just making some overall comments at the end of each project on your blog as discussed. Think about white edges and borders and how ensuring your paper is larger than your plate you can give your prints more strength. It’s good to see that you have visited so any exciting exhibitions – keep this up and perhaps start looking on line or more contemporary printmakers.


Suggested reading/viewing
Printmaking Today is a useful resource magazine and Google images are always a good quick reference; you can type in themes or subjects that might be of interest to you. The Printmakers Gallery in St.Ives shows some wonderful work – it’s one of the only galleries in the country that shows only prints.


Other



Tutor name: Niki White
Date 9 September,2010
Next assignment due November 2010