Printing onto Newsprint

So I had a go at printing with my etching plate onto the newsprint I have been talking about. I had no idea whether it would actually work but I was quite surprised how well the first print turned out.

There’s still quite a bit of detail in the print which I wasn’t expecting ! This was just an experiment really to see how well printing onto newsprint would work. Next time I think I will produce a different plate with more white space so the colours and patterns of the newsprint below can show through stronger. I’m unsure as to whether I should have really made this print in the centre – however it is only a test so I’m not going to worry about it too much !

  This was originally one of my favourite pieces of discarded newsprint so I’m a bit disappointed that the print didn’t work out too well on it. It feels like I’ve wasted it in a way ! I’m unsure as to why this print didn’t work as well as the previous one. I took the same amount of ink off the plate so I suspect it may be something to do with the paper. Arthur suggested there could be some sort of solvent on the newsprint that’s blocking the ink – or it may be the the ink that’s already on the newsprint that's stopping it !  I could work into it maybe – make it a bit more bold / interesting !

Although this print didn’t work as well as the first one it has still printed with quite a bit of detail. I think it really depends how many layers of ink are originally on the newsprint before printing over it. E.g. – the second print I produced didn’t really print that well – but there are many different layers of ink on that particular piece of newsprint. It could even be acetone or something similar that's preventing the plate from printing as well as it could do. I really think this may be what it is as most of this newsprint I have acquired from the Lithography section of the print room, were newsprint is used underneath aluminium plates when they are being cleaned (with acetone). I’ll just have to watch out for this – there’s no way of really determining whether a piece has acetone on it or not….it’s just going to be one of them things ! However I plan to use the newsprint in a more creative way next time. Possibly experimenting with the technique of “chine colle” to simply collage areas of newsprint onto a piece of paper then printing. Arthur also gave me the idea of using a photograph I have taken of the “Yellow Pages Sculpture” and producing a Photo Plate to incorporate this into a print as well. I would probably print this photo plate in colour. Although the print will have colour from the discareded newsprint it will be nice to have some from a new print as well.