Tutor's Report Assignment 3 - 27th May 2011

Tutor Report Form

Student name: Simon Allard
Student number: 487150
Course/Module title: Printmaking
Assignment number: 3 – Developing Relief Prints

Overall Comments
Simon, this body of work is superb,,,you have put in a huge amount of time and effort in order to thoroughly consider the reductive methods of lino-printing, incorporating various ways of adding texture too. Your sense of colour is really progressing, and you are not afraid to accept any trouble shooting along the way; out of which your skills and knowledge become more focused. Your sketchbooks are beautiful, showing such an array of very expressive and emotive imagery in a range of media. Your log book and consistent critiques of each assignment via your blog is a fantastic tool to reflect upon and the journey you have embarked on visually here seems never ending! The wonderful thing about printmaking is that the possibilities for trying something new are endless, you can think outside the box and bring processes together to achieve particular effects. It's fun and engaging and often not all about the end result, but rather the process itself that brings your learning into fruition...well done! Your discerning eye throughout the whole assignment is super – you continue to assess every little detail of the printed surface, striving for a perfect balance between light, form, colour and texture.

Feedback on assignment

Project 8
Taking a section of Monet's painting of the seascape and boat is brave...and you have bought it to life in your own way in your own little watercolour study. Breaking this down to become a linoprint as you have is very interesting, in that it's only really relied on the cut reductive lino for the little boat itself. I love the fact that you've developed a very effective way of colouring the 'background' sea and sky with the ambiguous suggestion of an horizon. The composition is ideal with the boat just off-centre of the picture plane. The transfer of ink is a little faint and blotchy in areas, but it seems to ad to sunny, hazy feel of the print, with the dab effect boat reflections being uniquely different in each of the proofs. The transparency of the colour works in part with this print, but I sense that some areas could do with being a shade darker to give a better sense of perspective; of near and far. I'm surprised at how well the oil paints have printed, by adding extender to them...great! You detail planning and preparation is key to the success of this print – with such focus on obtaining just the right hues of sienna’s.

I know you began this project using the theme of erosion with the rusting shackles; there are some beautiful drawings in your sketchbook, but it didn't work for you so well. I certainly think you're right to realise that the cross hatch background effect (wonderful idea in theory and a beautiful texture) just seems to detract from the strength and power that the shackles need to stand out. The effects of the overlapping the oil mixed paint has produced some beautiful tones, ranging from light to dark and ink transfer is excellent, as to is your registration; the registration plate was ideal! The various dabbing effects are superb, and my favourites in this series are where you've hand coloured with watercolour afterwards, ensuring that the background hatching is softened down, becoming darker and therefore receding. The cartridge paper has absorbed the inks very well, as has the BFK paper, as you'd expect given it's cost! Cartridge is fine for lino as you see here, and I've used BFK for collagraphs as it allows itself to become wet prior to printing. Another great paper, smooth and strong and in various weights, is Zerkall smooth (available from Lawrences or Great Art – super for monoprints too, as is the Fabriano) I think, with the variety of textural possibilities in this subject you may find the focus should remain on the shackles themselves, perhaps using a variety of cuts and marks to represent their aged feel. I also really think that this subject matter would lend itself hugely to being translated into collagraph, where you can really play with a rich depth of colour and texture to produce numerous layers. I think increasing the scale of the print, as you suggest in your log, would give you more scope for creating the desired effect and atmosphere, along with denoting the bore waves and giving a little more detail to the reflected light off the shoulders and heads of the rowers. Lots of scope here too for combining the lino cut with perhaps some monoprinted backgrounds, using transparent colours to overlap. I use Akua Intaglio inks from Lawrences for my monoprints, lino and collagraphs. It's very pricey, but a little goes a long way and they really are superb for in their quality when overlaying colour after colour, without the need for extender.
Your mixed media studies on erosion are fabulous – masking fluid and bleaching the inks is lovely....sometimes I'll approach my printmaking in this mixed media fashion and prepare my paper by staining it in part prior to printing (with drawing inks or printing ink rubbed in with a rag) I also work into my prints after with pastels and graphite sometimes....something you might like to experiment with!

Project 9
Your test print blocks using a variety of mark m,making tools are great; they show numerous textural possibilities that can't always be found when using traditional cutting tools. Their organic nature would allow them to be used in a whole host of ways within a print, whether representational or abstract. The paint stripper are full of energy- caustic soda gives similar effects too; worth leaving for at least 24 hours, depending on the depth of the 'bite' you want. There are some lovely delicate marks here too, made with the hammer and saw blade, which could certainly be used to depict pebbles in your previous project. The marks are defines best using in the dark blue prints, and would be even stringer and crisper had the ink transferred more opaquely. Sometimes when burnishing the back of the paper, by hand, fingers or a spoon, you end up seeing some of those marks in the print...a little bit like the principal of back-drawn monopprints. This too can add interest, but if you want good, flat and even blocks of colour then the burnishing needs top be given more attention, where lifting off corners to see the transfer happening can help you gauge which areas might require more pressure. A good roll up of ink on your palette and roller is essential too. I love the curved crescent shapes of the gouge being hammered in. It's not easy to stay be in control of this process of distressing the lino like this...but that's the joy of discovery here, and once you form an idea about a particular composition and subject, then you can refer to these later.

Project 10
What a mammoth task you have set yourself here to translate the lovely painting of this landscape into print. These editioned prints are fantastic...on a confident scale in wonderful range of colours...albeit portraying a sense of flatness throughout, but with lots of potential for further studies in a range of different palettes (cool or warm or a combination) I know you wanted to really convey a sense of atmosphere of the landscape, and the ancient chalk earth certainly comes though by your incorporation of surface texture in the fields. My eye travels the hedgerow up and across to reach the Uffington White Horse – it;s wonderful!You have moved on to using wood here using beech laminate – and 12 separate blocks...wow!! Your planning is very thorough with regards to the colours you chose to use along with the textures creating by applying ink in inventive ways and using the hessian on the back of lino. It's very thick paper you've used here...not always the easiest to transfer ink from the black when you're burnishing by hand, but you managed this well. What's really working is the variety of contrast throughout the whole image; every area is slightly different, suggesting expressive marks and energy through some beautiful shapes that fit together like a jigsaw. I like the fact that the distant hills are flat blocks of colour – the greys and blues are so well balanced with e4ach other showing sense of perspective. This perspective, of near and far, is not so easily identifies=d within the rest of the image...if it where, you would have more of sense of being in the landscape .That flatness is not a distraction though – this print would translate well into a beautiful textile wall hanging...on an even larger scale! Dabbing the kitchen towel on the ink is very effective and I really admire your confident to control the printing process through cutting the wood, to manipulating the inked up surface in a number of ways to add surface pattern and texture. The painting actually shows the very background hills at the horizon in a very dark slate grey; in the print this would have certainly helped pushed them back. Fingerprints and stray bits of ink is avoidable with practice and patience! You can make little paper fingers to holed your paper when registering, to avoid this. You may also find that handling a bigger piece of appear may have been easier, so that there was a bigger margin around the edge of the print. Waiting for each colour to dry before applying the next is unavoidable, especially with oil based inks...but essential! I love the test prints you've done before embarking on these prints. Here you have played with light and dark tones of blue – a very wintery, snowy feel, and you begin to discern the tones that are working well and those that aren't. Somerset is amazing paper – but being thicker it certainly needs a good deal of pressure to print by hand with. To help with transfer you could experiment by spraying the paper first with water, and then blotting it prior to printing. I think you;re right in realising the potential for this print to be made using fewer tones of colour...keeping it simpler, just by adding black and white to one colour, you can create a whole range of hues that would help bring about atmospheric effects.
The little experimental prints using a variety of surfaces to mark and print from are intriguing. Plywood is a lovely surface, especially because it;s grain is often evident in the print and it's good to see you trying out over printing with perspex for added effects. Great Art sell Japanese ply...easier for cutting and better suited to use a relief printing surface. Not only does it cut well with lino tools, but it takes well to being sanded and cut with a little electrical hand-held dremmel. I wonder what some of your prints might have looked like on some Japanese papers or silk fibre papers. Lino and wood always print beautiful onto these thin transparent, but very strong papers that usually come in a range of shades of white. Printing on coloured paper may be worth experimenting with a later date too.

Learning logs/critical essays
Your log book is so concise at every stage of your working process – both the online version as well as the copious notes made alongside your sketches and planning sheets. Your critical essay looking at Spencer and Gaughin is very insightful, and I hope you'll continue to look at other artists work to help inspire and inform your own work.
With our online blog; your could balance out the amount of writing by adding some more images of your work. Take a look at another of my students blogs here -
http://carolsmithchinaocalogblog.blogspot.com/


Suggested reading/viewing
The Printmakers Council have a fabulous website full of links to artists and other printmaking websites.
www.reliefprint.co.uk (lino)
www.handprintstudio.co.uk (collagraph, carborundum)
www.colinmoore.uk.com
Robert Gillmor (muli block lino of birds within the landscape)
Charles Shearer (card relief collagraphs)
Gaughin's woodcuts
Terry Frosts woodcuts,,,and paintings
Kandisnsky (woodcuts)
Edvard Munch (wood/lino)

Other



Tutor name: Nichola White
Date 27th May, 2011
Next assignment due 01/07/11