Coming to an end...

I am now writing my evaluation for this project, and I can honestly say I much prefer the making to the writing about the making! I have really enjoyed this project, and will defiantly carry on using the skills I have learnt.

Owl Owl Owl Turtle

Now that I am starting to understand colour I am really enjoying it! And the project is almost finished which is just typical! 

These images below I made using scans of mono prints and again putting them as a layer behind my line work in photoshop. My mono print was originally dark blue and yellow, but I played about with the colours in the hue and saturation drop down in photoshop. I think it's quite nice to come away from the traditional colours used for an owl. I saw the blue and purple and thought it worked well with the owls face blue, making the stare seem even colder, like stone. 

I added another mono print layer to the turtle in the image below. I don't really like this though, I don't think it's very balanced as a whole image. There defiantly needs to be more colour somewhere but I need to play about with where it should be.

The image below is my final and favourite. I did want their to be colour on the bottom part of the image, but instead of adding the mono print to the turtle I added it to the background and then faded it out to the top of the picture. I think this works, the balance of white in the image works better like this because it is at both the top and the bottom (the turtle)

Angry Owl

I decided to use some of the mono prints that I am not going to hand into my elective and work into them further. I scanned this mono print onto my computer. I changed the levels so that it was much darker, I want to create a feel of autumn and anger with my colours of this image. I placed my other image from before where I drew an owl over a turtle. I removed the turtle and placed the owl so it appeared to be on the branch of the print. I added some colour to a layer between my background and my line work so that the owl stands forwards of the dark background. I then just played about with colours and added some lines to the branches of the tree so that the foreground and background didn't seem to separate.

I am really happy with this image, and although it hasn't all been made in the print room I think it's quite nice to use lots of different processes and gather them all together in photoshop. It seems like a useful middle ground!

The image above is that same as the first image, but I have hidden all line work. I quite like that the image is reliant on just shape (which is something I NEVER do!). I'm not sure if I like it just because I understand that the bright yellow marks are supposed to be staring eyes, it might not be as clear to other people that it is a pissed off owl on a branch where the leaves are falling off.

OBSESSED!

This project has made me realise something, that I partially already knew, but this brief has confirmed it for me. I am a very obsessive learner. Ridiculously so.

When I researched about Iain McArthur I became obsessed and this began to influence my work and change the way I consider my lines when I draw them. And now with the print room! I have always loved the print room but I really really think that print it the way that I want to take my work. Even if I am just using elements of print to create bigger images. I just love the process and finished product of a good print.

Working in print has made me change the way that I think about making an image. When working with Lino you really have to think about areas of light and dark before thinking about areas of colours. When working with screen print I find it good to have both delicate line work and some looser shapes and areas that don't necessarily matter if they align differently each time. 

After this project I really want to develop my work both in the print room and with colour and line work. I'm starting to get really excited with the work that I am creating :D

Reading Week - Day 4

Today I got to do so much stuff concerning colour, and it's so annoying that none of it can be used here!!!!
But thats ok because I have learnt lots of new skills for printing with colour.

I have learnt that when trying to mix the ink used for Lino and Mono you really need to consider the colour and shade that you want. Start from the lightest colour and adding tiny parts of darker ones. Mixing the inks themselves takes a long time, and to mix them you have to use a specific technique. Instead of just getting a white and adding blue and mixing you have the put the inks on the table and use a spatular to scrape the colours into each other. It is hard to explain but the technicians in the print room are always around to help! I got too impatient with my colour mixing and rolled the colour out with the roller before it was consistent, meaning that some of my prints are slightly blotchy.

I also got the opportunity to screen print over many different colours of paper today to see how the ink transfers. I was using white paint, which i mixed at 50% with the binder, making it more opaque than normal but meaning I have to print fast so the screen doesn't dry out. Sarah said that white never goes over darker colours too well, but this made my prints quite interesting. The white was going over the paper colours and picking up tints of the colour, so when printing on black the white paint appeared a really light blue.

Towards the end of the day I started to layer different print processes onto of each other. Combining Lino with screen printing in many different layers, which was really successful. And I then tried to combine etching with both drypoint and mono, these failed quite amusingly! But this means that I can use the mono and drypoint backgrounds that I used for other images :)

Reading Week - Day 3

Today I made some screen prints in a four colour separation as I was making my Lino. A few weeks ago when in the print room I realised that making work is so much more efficient when you have something to do as a filler task, other wise too much time is wasted on waiting. I applied this work ethic to today, I knew that waiting for my screens to dry and waiting for the printing beds to be available would take a while, so I continued cutting the layers of the lino when waiting.

I decided to make a screen with four colour separation so that it would help me understand colour slightly better. I learnt much more than I originally thought I was going to!

First off when making a print with a four colour separation you need to mix the inks, but perfectly. I normally guess the levels of ink and binder when preparing my colours. With a four colour separation you can't do this, all four colours need to be of the same level so that they can perfectly sit over the top of one another. You need 50g of system 3 acrylic paint (in cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and 100g of binder. This should make up a whole pot of ink. I managed to make much less that this at first because the scales were set to pounds! But we worked it out and no ink was wasted :)

Above is a small section of one of my prints that went wrong because it wasn't aligned correctly. I am not going to use it for my print elective because of this but it is a really good example of how the ink lay over each other to make different colours. 

Reading Week - Day 2

Today I worked lots with Lino. I have made a Lino that is made out of 3 different pieces so that I can ink each piece of the plate up with separate colours. I can't show any of the images that I make from this print process but I can show the plate it self.

This is my lino in it's final stages of cut, the owl is nearly all cut away.

The problems that I had with this process were; cutting the lino itself, placing it all together for printing, and registration.

The Lino is really really thick and has a gauze backing beneath it. Cutting through the lino is fine but trying to get through the gauze was near impossible, my whole right arm went numb trying to cut it! Thankfully Neil came and helped me with the rest of the tricky bits!

I also had lots of problems when trying to place the three separate plates back together once they were inked up. You can't touch the surface because you were create imperfections in the ink, but plates don't fit back together as perfectly as they had come apart. I ended up having to shave small parts of the bird layer away so that it would fit easily into the middle. Even then I had to use a small spiked took to push the plates into place (as long as you put the took in a part of the lino that you have cut away it won't mark the print!)

Then Finally when I came to layer the images up I found even more problems. The nipping press that I used moves the sheets of paper! So even if you line it up it moves, so you have to be really really protective of the placement of the paper right up until it is under the press and ready to be pressed.