Tutor's Assessment for Final Assignment

Open College of the Arts
Tutor report

Student name Simon Allard Student number 487150
Course/Module Printmaking 1 Assignment number 5


Overall Comments
Your final assignment shows great clarity in your use of combining mono and lino print, with extended use of a mixed media approach to convey strong subject matter. You have really pushed the boundaries of your printmaking, developing confident work that gives you an insight into the understanding of a printed image. Bringing together your illustrative skills and your preferred painterly style of working by using monoprinting, this body of work has gathered momentum to show bright and bold images that rely heavily on your developing technical skills.


Feedback on assignment

Project 13
'And every leaf that falls becomes the quiet earth' depicts powerful imagery, where you have carefully considered the necessary composition that would best illustrate the words from a song. Where text is used in conjunction with imagery, a story is told, and each print is like a page from a book, each varying in intensity and ambiance. The oil based inks give a richness of colour, saturating the print with a number of layers using the reductive lino method of printing. Somerset paper is one of the best, and it's proven here by it's ability to absorb and transfer ink from the plate....printing a lino block of this size by hand is not easy, but through trial and error you have achieved good results. Although ensuring the lettering is cohesive throughout has proved challenging; if the block moves during printing it can prove difficult. You could try avoiding the use of the roller to burnish, where it encourages the plate to slip, and instead use your hand and fingers to rub the back of paper, giving you more control.
Each print in this series is very different, where you have explored the mark making onto your mono-plate in different ways, which is then revealed in the forms of the falling soldiers and the background sky. I particularly like the second print where they are a rich, warm orange, but the tree backgrounds are not as bold as the previous version, nor is the lettering. It's obvious here, that elements of each print, if bought together as a whole, would equate to the 'perfect' print! Your edges are very narrow, so handling the prints could prove tricky, especially if wanting to avoid dirty finger prints! It's not detracted from the image, but it's worth leaving larger margins to help 'sit' the image on the paper and proves essential if ever mounting and framing the print.
Print three in green and gold is lucid and free, but shouts out for another layer to give a further dimension that would help set things back, bringing a sense of depth as in the previous prints. But I really like the style of this print, where you have bought expressive marks into play that are then overprinted with a transparent yellow/gold. The transparency of ink when layering like this is an important consideration. To see what's gone before, with the first layer showing some pattern and texture, really adds to it's overall appeal. It may be that the green needs pushing back further so these qualities are revealed more. Perhaps by using a blue or deeper forest/emerald green layer some balance may become more apparent. As you notice, the green overpowers the whole; some more rubbing away of the green could help this, or use a transparent extender to lighten the saturation of the ink.
You use back-drawing to extend your mark-making effects to create the background for print four, using a very different colour palette. The painterly wash of purple, pink and green relate on one level, where they seem to sit in harmony, but there's also the contrast of some dis-harmony, where there's apparent tension. Your spontaneous approach to the making of this print has proved to be not only more pleasurable for you, but it hasn't taken anything away from the strength of the subject. The lettering would benefit from being very black and uniform in it's coverage, as could the green around the edges, but overall the qualities found in this simpler approach are just as valid, if not more, than in the arduous efforts of your reductive prints. It's simplicity captures the attention of the onlooker.
It was an ambitious project, but one that you came to with careful thought and consideration, using your plans and imagery gathered in your sketchbook. The most striking aspect of these prints is in their play on negative and positive space, and the illusions that can be so easily created through the juxtaposition of colour, form and light. The skyline played a really important part in consolidating a sense of place and giving way to the perception of the horizon – these prints are 'loud'; but the earth is not yet quiet!

The last layer of black in the previous reductive prints is apparent because it has nothing to absorb into...the paper has been printed before in three colours, so it's just going over ink. It therefore looks tacky and still wet. You can buy additives like a tack reducer that could help, but I suspect it's the very nature of oil-based inks when thickly printed one over the other in numerous layers.


Project 14
It certainly makes sense to use your existing lino block of Brompton Cemetery to explore the effects of chine colle. You've expanded on the previous prints of this block by cutting more away in the background and preparing monoprinted backgrounds to print on; which has certainly added to the richness of these prints. It would be interesting to see the chine colle used without the backgrounds too, just to compare. In some cases, the background adds another dimension, that could easily detract from the subtleties apparent in the papers you've used. Gold and copper leaf are super for using in chine colle...but;s it's making decisions about where your place them that’s crucial. You've explored a range of colour combinations, starting off with warm browns and reds, reducing it down to the cool blues, which are more inline with the solid, cold stone subjects of the headstones. Keeping the colour palette balanced in any print is vital; too much contrast and the imagery itself can be lost. The kitchen foil has proved really effective here as part of your chine colle foreground cross. Scrunching it up first to add to it;s surface is a good idea....this can be done to coloured tissue papers too, and some tissue papers, when splashed with water, bleed their colours; another worthy experiment in the gathering of interesting papers to use. You soon realised that using the papers as suggestions for shapes and forms was more manageable than trying to cut very complex shapes. I love the way the orange paper has been used to suggest shadow and give an additional third dimension, whereas on the cross you have deliberately cut the foil to shape, rather than rely on a possible abstracted effect. Foils can be shaped easily by tearing lightly and producing little 'cracks'; there's a little on in print 1 (series2). You could elaborate on this allowing the foil to take on some the natural line qualities apparent in rock and stone. The attraction of the fibre papers comes from the need to examine the print closer, looking at the papers in a new light, where they hold their own appeal and then stepping back seeing them become a part of the whole.
The tension of abstract and figurative qualities bought to light through the use of chine colle has been an inspiring part of this project for you, where you have been able to bring the two together, each complementing the other.
Orange and blue are complementary colours so it's worked here, but it would be really interesting to have seen another coloured paper or two, just to compare.


Project 15
These are my favorite set of prints in this assignment, by far! It's the scale, the angles of perspective, the striking balance of positive and negative shape and space, and most of all the energy you have given to your need to experiment endlessly with textural effects, where the atmosphere and 'mood' of an image is it's overriding success. These prints are sculptural (look at Henry Moore's drawings, paintings and prints) Each print version is so unique and individual and yet they all run with the same theme; one feeds ideas for the next and the next. Your contrasting prints here bring together all that you have practiced in the previous projects, but have more vigor and confidence.
Print one (FOUR) showing the close-up view of the figure is flat and decorative, where you’ve made such large cutaways in the wood/lino that are visible and remind me of tree bark or even flames. The orange chine colle in the corner adds further interest. Your choice of colours complement each other and the contrasting marks, vertical and horizontal ensure that negative and positive shape is separated. More back-drawing could add to the print, but the happy accident occurring in the mottled, blotchy green transfer of ink, due to the l back-drawing is really effective.
Print two is rich in decorative effects; it's the completely new color pallet that adds to its appeal. The shocking pink with the electric blue is super, and the back-drawn marks throughout are rough, rugged and weathered. Your use of masks here is excellent – there's much scope to use this technique in the future with lino and/or mono. The suggestive shadows on the figures are an essential part of their solidity, but there could be a little more going on in their foreground, like some backdrawn imagery in black that 'fills in'. You begin to make more of this in the other version, but the black layer is only just visible. I like the ghostly appearance of these figures; their whole mystic and persona is very tangible. I wonder what a light source on the figures would achieve; as in print three where your woodcut shows a definite light coming from the right.
Print three shows the crafted quality of the figures and their seemingly grand scale as the onlooker views them from afar. They are ominous and yet reassuring. The subtle use of two blocks coming together to form one really works; it's a construction in itself! You could easily have been more adventurous with your palette again; the same colours are used as before, but they work, where you use the white of the paper to highlight areas. The quality of the carving could have been contrived and controlled, but actually it's strength lies in it's randomness and energetic, expressive marks. You could have tried using an electric hand-held sanding tool, or saws, knives, screwdriver. I also think these could be taken into lino, where you could experiment with the use of caustic soda, painted on to the lino and left to bite and etch away certain areas. That worn, distressed look is evident – you could experiment with your choice of colours to further this effect, using rusty browns, reds, oranges; the figures could be stone or metal (Anthony Gormley's Angel of the North comes to mind)
The white on black monoprints are powerful; did you print directly from a page in your sketchbook by drawing into the ink? Seeing the torn out page edge is intriguing and the scratched lines evoke an uncomfortable sense of agitation. Some chine colle, in gold or copper could be worth trying out – they'd stand out so strongly on the black paper and produce a sense of the celestial. You've explored this a little in your preparatory sketches, where you continue to explore mark making to the full using bleach and pen and ink along with your cut-out masks. There's full potential to produce a whole new body of work using a combination of techniques and mediums. You could work into your prints in this vain or prepare your paper like this prior to then printing over it. Quink ink (in blue or black) is a superb ink that can bleached out in this way, using brushes or nibs.

It's so pleasing to see your journey throughout this course Simon, where you consistently experiment in as many different ways as possible, seeming fearless in your approach to embracing a very inventive working process. I hope you continue to take risks whilst you embark on developing your own personal voice through your imagery. Your communication skills are an integral part of all your work – you are trying to say something in your work, and this can only grow and evolve.


Sketchbooks
Your observational studies in your sketchbooks, alongside written notes, are a great resource. You have an innate ability to interpret things that you see or images you collect and paste in, in a way that comes into a new light and becomes your own. Making things work for you, for your preferred style of painting, drawing or printing is essential and now your have developed the necessary technical skills for printmaking, you can begin to run! Sometimes less is more, but whilst you're in an experimental phase, try out all you can, especially when it comes to combining techniques.



Learning Logs/Critical essays
Your logbook is thorough in evaluating your work; there's plenty of critical appraisal about what has been successful and what hasn't. It would be good to see a little more detail that breaks down your working process for each set of prints where you combine processes, just to help identify exactly how you've arrived at each point – this can take the form of notes or photos of your plates at each stage of the printing. It's good for your own future reference too. I'm really pleased that you have found the work of other printmakers so valuable at this stage; from my suggestions you began to see things differently and take on board the possibilities for working with semi-abstract imagery.

Take a look at the Printmakers Council for updates on artists work and links to other printmaking websites, and Printmaking Today is an invaluable magazine that also gives technical advice as well as lists of exhibitions. Just had my new magazine through the post this morning and you may want to look up the BBH (Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire) Print Society -
www.majorgeorge.co.uk/bbh-print-society/



Tutor name: Nichola White
Date 24th September, 2011