27.04.21 - Crit + Printmaking | Archway

Crit

It was interesting to see other people’s approaches to the lino workshop today in the crit and how they made it relevant to their works. One of the things I was most impressed with was the works that had mixed digital and traditional – a topic I was originally planning to focus on. Salmaluna used her prints to make an animated gif, she would slightly change the look of the layers by wiping away the ink with white spirit before printing – having a sort of flickering animation. Lucy scanned her prints and layered them onto photography – a technique I was looking at before easter, but she was able to accomplish it through lino works. It showed me that lino prints do not always have to stay on the paper to be an outcome.

Overall, I noticed that the most successful pieces were those that had many experimentations done to them, such as changing around the colours, printing onto different textures/materials, layering, overlapping, etc – something I was planning to do after the crit. This crit reemphasised the point that I need to become more experimental with my project, so far I am ‘playing it safe’.

Printmaking

For the rest of the day I spent my time in the printmaking studio testing out different surfaces to print onto and reattempting adding different gradients because it did not work well last week.

Today the studio was filled with people from the graphic design classrooms who were also learning how to print, so I had the opportunity to talk with people outside my pathway and see some of their works which was very useful. One student was printing using odd materials such as bubble wrap, textured cardboard, tin foil, etc – the results were beautiful, they worked well as a patterned background for other prints. – they were using the etching press.

Another person who had a very similar topic to me on the environment was using scraps of rubbish like old milk cartons, sandwich packages, food wrapping, etc to print interesting patterns and textures.

I too was interested in incorporating materials such as these into my prints as they reflect one of the topics/issues my Tale tries to convey, however the attempts I made were unsuccessful. Printing onto plastics such as acetate was difficult because my lino designs lines are too thin, the sheet also has no grip so it seems to slide whilst printing. I was focussed on trying to print my designs onto the materials whereas the other people I met today were using the materials as a way to create ink textures – something I would like to try too the next time I am printing…maybe Thursday? I could even try embossing.

I also briefly went down to the 3D workshop to collect some spare wood pieces that I might start practicing on for wood block printing. I did talk to Umberto today about the printing and he offered to ready the wood next week if I sent him the dimensions – so I think this is what I will be focussing on during the progress tutorial week. For the mean time however, if I have time then I want to try testing small basic designs on the wood I gathered today – maybe the stamps? I will need to research a few artists related to wood block printing.

Reflection

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