Looking back at the project

 

Throughout this project I have been able to extend on the many processes learnt in semester one whilst also learning about completely new ones such as etching, wood block printing and woodwork. I also gained a significant amount of experience through organising “Visualyse” with Sylvia from time based art and taking part in the group exhibition in the cantina. Throughout this semester I feel I have really built as an artist not just in my work but also through engaging with other artists and experiencing new things which I have never experienced before !

Highlights from Retchy v Smash VJ set at Visualyse

Visualyse Gig from RetchyvSmash on Vimeo.

Multi-Layered Etching / Woodcut Prints

I’ve been experimenting quite a bit with these prints now and have quite a variety of outcomes as a result of this ! Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the most recent prints I produced and now I’m back home in Liverpool so I’ll just have to talk about the ones I have took pictures of ! These are rubbish pictures as well by the way….sorry !

 

 

This was one of the first  multi-layered prints I produced. I have spoke about it previously however I wanted to make a post which included most / all of my prints so I could look and compare them with each other ! With this print I first had the woodcut print which had been printed onto some “Mulberry” tissue paper. This was then used to chine-collé onto the tan coloured paper at the same time as the Etching print was made. I really like the subtlety of the etching over the wood-cut however I think it may be too subtle. Also the jump between the woodcut print / paper is quite major and I think needs something to break that stark contrast up a bit. (both wood blocks used to print onto tissue paper)

 

This was produced in exactly the same way as the previous print, just using a different coloured ink for the etching. I like the colours in this one but there’s still quite a large contrast between the woodcut print and the paper. Also in the previous print you could clearly see the etching print over the top of the woodcut but in this print the colours are too similar so it just blends in. (single woodcut print on the tissue paper)

 

  This was the first multi-layered print I produced using the larger soft ground etching plate. It was produced in the same way as the others. I decided to mix a light grey as last time I liked the way the etching print showed over the woodcut however I wasn’t too sure on the blue-ish tone.  This was really a test print made on some small magnani paper to see how the print would work out. I do like it, however I think the ink is too strong over the woodcut. For this reason I decided to experiment using extender in the etching inks. (single woodcut print onto tissue paper)

 

In this print I used extender in the etching ink – approximately a ratio of 70:30 (70 ink). It has made a bit of a difference but not as much as I would have liked. Also I got the positioning messed up. I think it is when I was placing the paper over the top of the etching plate / woodcut print – the tissue paper must have moved. I’m really pleased with the results of the soft ground etching plate. The patterns and textures the found materials have made work really well with the ones in the woodcut print. (2 woodcut prints onto tissue paper using same woodblock but opposite way around)

 

 

I have had a lot of trouble with getting prints straight but this one caused me to do something about it ! I put a bit more extender in the ink before making this print. It seemed to have an affect although I think the ink generally looks lighter because of the coloured paper it is on ! After this print I then made a template on some newsprint as a guide of were to position the paper. I also decided to add more extender to the ink as although I do like this one there is still too much happening in the centre I think. (2 woodcut prints onto tissue paper using two separate wood blocks)

 

 This was one of my more successful prints. I managed to get the positioning pretty sorted and also the transparency of the ink I was pretty happy with ! (50:50 ratio). To overcome the big jump from the woodcut to the paper I added another layer of tissue paper in between the one with the woodcut on and the paper – giving the prints a “halo” which really seemed to work and softened the harshness of the contrast really well ! I like how the print from the etching plate has a different effect on the paper / tissue paper/ woodcut – making the overall print a lot more interesting than previously. (single woodcut print on tissue paper)

 

  I decided to use the two previous etching prints I had produced to overprint onto as I thought this may produce some interesting effects and I had a lot of ink left over on that day after producing the other prints ! The ink still has a 50:50 ratio of ink to extender in which worked well when printing over the other etching as it didn’t appear to strong over it but still showed over the other prints / tissue paper. I like how with this print you can’t really notice the grey ink until you get up close. It relates back to the idea of taking a second look at an object – not just dismissing it for what it is. Looking at an object in more detail and seeing the hidden beauty ! I decided to keep with using another layer of tissue paper as well as it really helps bring the print together. With this print I positioned the tissue paper with the photo mount on straight onto the damp paper and then placed the etching plate over the top. I then flipped the paper / plate over. This was so I could match the plate up with the print accurately. This method seemed to work well – and allowed me to position both the tissue paper / woodcut print and etching plate exactly were I wanted to. I was a bit worried at first – especially with flipping the paper / plate over as I thought the plate may slip however it seemed to work OK ! The woodcut print is a lot darker than the previous ones however it was a print I produced early on in the project with a different coloured ink which I decided to use as I. I think this darker colour works well with the colours in this prints – especially with the orangey colour. (2 woodcut prints on tissue paper using same woodblock opposite way around.)

 

This print was produced in the same way as the previous one. You can’t really see the grey ink over the black as much as over the orangey rusty  colour in the previous print, however I think the grey still brings the whole print together although it’s not so strong.

 

 I wanted to try out overprinting onto a print produced from the previous etching plate I produced (the plate produced using hard ground and then different materials and turps used to remove it). I really like how this has turned out but I can’t work out whether I like the fact that the prints aren’t the same size as each other or not. I think the colours work really nice in this print. The soft subtle print from the hard ground plate doesn’t over power the grey print from the large sort ground plate – it just sits nicely over the top. I decided not to use another piece of tissue paper between the woodcut print and the paper however I think this could have worked quite nicely.

I’m pretty pleased with this collection of prints and I think from experimenting with different layers / extender / processes I have really learnt a lot. It’s a shame that there’s not really more time to produce any more prints in this semester, however I know I can use the same techniques and processes in year 3 so it doesn’t bother me too much. There are some more prints which I produced – including just producing the woodcut print straight onto the paper instead of tissue paper and also some experimentation with other colours. When I get back up to Dundee I will get some pictures so I can upload them onto here / explain how they were made etc. Overall I am very pleased with the outcomes and although there may not be a perfect final print I  am happy to have played around with different ideas and processes to produce the different results I have achieved.

Crazy !

I have a lot of stuff to post about....I have been majorly majorly busy the past two weeks with Visualyse and work for my course - this week being the most mad ! I shall make some posts over the Easter holidays I suspect ! Visualyse is tomorrow ! Ahhhhhhh ! That came round crazily fast - scary stuff !

Visualyse

Things are really coming together for Visualyse now ! I’m getting excited, but there’s still quite a lot to do and it’s a week on Wednesday !!!  Today we had a meeting with all the artists who want to exhibit work to work out where the work will be shown in the space and also how it will be displayed. Although not all the people who originally were interested turned up there was quite a few new faces which made up for it and most importantly we have a brilliant and definite variety of different works to exhibit on the night ! Tomorrow we have quite an important 2nd meeting with Matt – who will basically tell us if we can exhibit things in a certain way and if we can’t how we will get around it ! I’m quite worried about this meeting as I’m sure there will be things which we can’t do which we have planned to – however I’m hoping there will be ways around this ! It’s all coming together now which I’m so glad about – I just hope people turn up on the night now ! So if you haven’t already, invite all your friends and spread the word using our face book events page (click here to be taken to it !) =) ! I hate trying to promote things, however it has to be done in order for people to here about the event !

Apart from organising Visualyse I have all my work to finish and finalise before finishing for Easter ! Assessment isn’t until after Easter, however because I’m going home I really need to finish everything as I can’t just go into the studio or the print-making workshops ! This means I have just under two weeks left ! I’m trying to get things together with my prints at the moment. Things seem to be working out well and I think I’m getting somewhere with them however I can’t seem to get things straight ! It’s a pretty big problem at the moment which I need to overcome – especially if I want to display a “final” print ! I’ll produce another post in the near future to evaluate and discuss these prints in more detail ! Printing aside, I also need to figure out what I am doing with my boxes which are displaying the found object sculptures. I have also started putting together a few pages out of my sketchbook which I need to start working on as well(see the post below this!) So alot to get done in these next two weeks as well as sorting out Visualyse for next Wednesday ! Hectic times !

Sketchbook Drawings

 

These are a few pages out of my “visual” sketchbook. I decided to produce some drawings of the sculptures I had made. I’m pretty happy with what I have produced – the newsprint is a really nice background for drawing onto – especially these muted, more subtle coloured pieces of newsprint. I was a bit weary of ripping them out my sketchbook at first, however I think they can be made into something more thank just a sketchbook page if worked into and developed more. The drawings need to be repositioned in order for them to work as a series I think. Therefore I will crop them out and position them in a more interesting composition. I can also experiment with the backgrounds of what they will be positioned on – possibly sections of the surrounding pages which have been cut out, some prints which I have produced, maybe even some objects them selves.

 

This is the kind of thing I’m thinking of. Obviously it wont be as precise as it wont be made up on Photoshop. I’m still not sure what to do though – it may work quite nicely if I develop it properly and work into the drawings more. I might produce another drawing to replace the one on the left as it’s not as noticeable as the other two drawings.

Soft Ground Etching

I decided to produce another etching plate to print and use as a bottom layer to go underneath my woodcut prints. For this plate I wanted to use some of the found objects to imprint into a soft ground – as this is a lot more direct than drawing from the objects or trying to replicate certain textures found on them (e.g. rust !). Obviously I had to use objects which would be OK going through the press so most of the objects I used were mainly string, laces, fishing rope etc. However I didn’t mind this too much as some really interesting patterns and shapes are created when they are placed on top of each other.

I can’t remember if this was before I had put it in the acid. I think it may be after I had put it in the acid for 5 minutes before stopping out any parts – to see which areas were going to suffer the most biting into from the acid so I knew which areas would be best to stop out. You can see on the close up images above the areas of silver – this is were the ground hasn’t been so strong so the acid has bitten through it. If I was to leave these areas without stopping them out the acid would bite further into the plate and when printed these areas would be very dark. I decided to stop out some of these areas and then put it back into the acid for 15 minutes. Once I had got the plate out of the acid and dried it I looked at the plate to see where the acid had bitten into deeper and then decided what parts to stop out before putting it in the acid again. There are parts which I would like pretty dark and parts which I don’t really want too dark. I don’t really want the background too dark so I decided to stop out some areas surrounding the imprints from the objects which were already bitten into quite strongly. I wanted some of the imprints from the objects to be dark and some to be lighter – really I didn’t mind which were and which were not just as long as there is an even distribution between dark and light imprints from the objects in the resulting prints from the plate. Below are some pictures of the plate with areas I stopped out.

      

You can get so carried away stopping out ! Originally I was just going to stop out parts that the acid had bitten into quite strongly already,  however I then also stopped out some imprints from the objects to get an even distribution of tones between them. After stopping out the areas I wanted to I then put the plate back into the acid for a further 10 minutes. After this the areas exposed to the acid on the plate were bitten into pretty deeply so I decided to leave it there. I then washed the ground off the plate and produced some prints – shown below.

 

I’m pretty impressed with how the first print turned out. I could probably work into areas of the plate more to make it more interesting, however I’m pretty happy with this as it is !   I decided to produce a colour print as well just to see how the plate printed in colour. Unfortunately I put too much Vaseline in the colour ink and when taking the ink off the plate a lot of it also came out of the bitten into areas as well. This resulted in the print not being as good as it could be. There are some areas not printed as strong as others, with a lot it not printed very strongly. However I’m quite glad this happened now and not when I was trying to produce a more final print as I now know not to use as much Vaseline ! For some reason I quite like this print though, just the accidental marks seem to make it quite interesting

  

Next week I am going to spend solely print-making, experimenting with chine-collé and different layers using the different wood cuts and etching plates I have produced. I also want to experiment with colour. In preparation for these prints I produced some wood-cut prints on Friday onto the same tissue paper I used last time I experimented with chine-collé. I made similar prints with the wood-cuts to the last ones I made however I also tried etching onto the tissue paper – which produced quite a nice result ! Hopefully next week I should get some quite nice prints done, especially with the large pile of prints I have on tissue paper ready to chine-collé.