Print Experimentation

Below are some of the experimental pieces I produced whilst trying to get to grips with the lithography print-making process and developing some ideas for a final print.

These are some of the prints I made using a plate developed from the sound drawings I initially created in the drawing project for the background and then printing a photograph I took of an iris in the botanic gardens (with the petals taken out) over the top of it.

I wasn’t really thinking about colour at this point so I just used whatever inks were out which other people were using.

I thought these prints would turn out better than they have. It may be the colour that is putting me off them but I think its more the boldness of the background appearing through the overprint.

These prints appealed to me a lot more. There’s something subtle about the print underneath but also the strong contrast between the man made rails and the floral image. The railings almost become part of the flower providing a pattern for its petals. Even though this appears as something visually appealing; the fact that the railings are providing  some visual “beauty” to the flower is quite sinister seen as though man is ultimately destroying nature all of the time !

In my very first experiments with lithography I used the original Iris photograph. I decided on these developmental prints to use the  original photo plate again to produce some backgrounds to print onto.  The second floral photo plate I created was ideal to do this as I had cut some sections out on Photoshop meaning when I printed a different colour over the top of the full original print the original colour and detail from it would show through the sections I had cut out. I think these have worked really well, however it doesn’t really convey the contrast between man and nature I have been looking at. I therefore decided to continue producing some prints using the railings photograph and the Iris photograph (with sections cut out). Because there wasn’t really much time left after I had produced a lot of these experimental prints I needed to really come up with what I could produce as a “final outcome.” I never like the idea of final outcomes however I needed one so I then decided to produce some more thought out prints using specific colours.

I decided to use an orange rusty colour for the railings and then a more natural colour ( blue/green) for the overprint. The print above was produced on newsprint so appears a lot bolder than it does on paper. This was another thing I had to think of ! Paper ! I started experimenting with a few different ones and came to the decision that the thinner paper worked best (even though the quality of the paper wasn’t so great !). I really liked the prints I produced on a sort of grid like texture – I’m unsure whether you can see this on the image below but it gives quite a nice feel to the print. 

^ Grid-like texture this paper seems to give. 

I also started thinking “why can I not print onto a more textured surface?!” and therefore looked at printing onto pieces of paper I had collaged with advertisements – resembling a surface covered in torn posters etc (a well known man made image!) . I wish I had more time to experiment with this idea however I only produced a couple of these last minute and I never really had time to develop them further.

Apologies for the wonky photographs ! Lol !