Making a circle

I started drawing a version of the circle of life tree the other day (which I was going to hang colourful tea pots off). The image I'm basing it on was from a google image search of the tree of life.

I was drawing it in pencil and pen but it was incredibly hard! I spoke to Vickie and she said why not make it with my(my boyfriends :p) graphics tablet because it should be much easier.

I kept getting really confused between the black and the white and the branches and the leaves!

I opened photoshop and wanted the start the image with an outlined circle. Which I couldn't make! I could make a solid circle, and a selection of a circle shape but I couldn't make it have any line weight as an outline.

So I seeked google for help! Luckyily someone else had the same problem and posted it on a forum and someone else posted the answer :)

Yay :)

So now I have,

When I was trying to draw this by hand I lightly drew blue lines around where I wanted the leaves to be. Unfortunately I stopped doing this as it didn't rub off very well and annoyed me a lot. So I tried the same thing with this, but the beauty of it being on a computer is that I can make the blue on a separate layer, so when the image is finished I can delete it completely.

I thought the best thing to do would be the solid black areas first, then I can delete the parts that I don't want to be there. However when filling in the area I want with black an annoying white line comes up between my fill area and my outline. The other day my tutor matt showed me how to stop this from happening, and I will have to ask him again because I have completely forgotten!

You can't really see the white lines in this small screen shot but they are there!!!

As there aren't lots of lines to cover I use the paint brush tool to cover them up. This would of been incredibly annoying if I had had to do it for the entire image.

Next I will erase the root spaces. Then start on the branches, and no doubt get confused again!

I already hate this image. The one on the right that I am basing it on looks to fluent and balanced. Mine already looks like the tree is dying. I think I will start again by doing all of the black first, drawing the branches and leaves all together. That way I can think more about the shape of the entire image instead of getting obsessed with all the fiddley bits.

To be continued...

Print room induction

So I went to the twilight print room induction today although I suspected it to just be them showing us around a room I'm already familiar with. I took some of my drawings just in case there was a chance of doing some work. Annddd luckily only two of us turned up at first so I got do start my etching!

I showed Roger my drawing of the owl tea party, he said for an image that size the copper will be quite expensive. As it is a process you can easily do wrong I decided to just draw one of the owls on their own as it will cost a lot less in copper.

In etching you can't have large areas of inked areas as it all falls out when putting it through the press. Some parts of my drawing (shaded parts) will be too large for etching.

Copper prices -

A6 - £1.29
A5 - £2.57
A4 - £5.14
A3 - £10.28
A2- £20.56

I didn't realise that the etching process was so different from screen printing, for some reason I thought you exposed the copper to the image you wanted. When you actually scratch your image into the copper, whoops! Which means all the detail that I put into my owl tea party was slightly pointless, but i can still use it for reference.

The process (with some of my photos) -

- cut copper to size
- sand the copper

- wash under the tap and use the yellow sponge, then blot dry.

- coat with floor varnish with black ink (use red tray and rest it on a block)

- drag the excess off onto spare paper

- leave to dry in drying room for about 10mins

- get a pointy stick and scratch the image into the copper. (Remember that whatever you scratch will be backwards once printed, if it needs to be a certain way trace original drawing and work from the tracing instead)

(this was a tested plate)

(I drew on a rough outline with a marker first. I wish that I hadn't because it is much harder to scratch the top layer off when going through the sticky ink as well)

- face the copper down on a newspaper book, then tape the entire back of the copper and overlap onto the newspaper.

- with a scalpal cut around the edges as close as possible.

- put on an etching hook and place into the tank of ferric chloride. (make sure the switch is on so it's bubbling)

( the amount of time you leave your copper in here depends on how old the solution is. It last up to one year. The newer the solution the less time it needs, new 15mins - old 45mins)

- I left mine for 25mins.

- Take out and let the remains drip back into the tub.

- Shake it about in the tub of water

- Put in the end container (caustic soda/ stripper) for ten minutes.

- After ten minutes put gloves on and wash the plate in the sink under running water and wipe with the blue sponge.

- get the ink from one of the swidgy paint guns (The ink is much thicker than ink used for other prints) put a small amount of ink on the table and using a small piece of card transfer it into the copper. Move the ink around in all different directions. Pull any extra ink off and back onto the table.

- get small pieces of tissue paper and run them around the plate until you get all excess ink off.

 

- You have to prepare wetted paper to print on (just put paper in a tub of water, then roll out the excess water)

- place the copper plate on a piece of waste paper, on the press, face up. Put a piece of tissue over that, then put all the press rollers over the top.

- Run the print through the press then remove all excess paper and leave the print to dry.

I made three prints from this first trial. The first was very inky, I left too much ink around the edges of the print.

The next one I made I removed as much ink as I could from all parts of the copper before putting it through the press. This one worked much better (although the photo I took is rubbish)

I then tried to put the print through the press again without re applying the ink. 

This did not work at all. The photo doesn't look as bad as the print does. The print itself is very poor, the ink isn't consistent across the image and it is very pale. I also didn't dry this paper well enough which is why it had creased and pulled as the roller went across it.

I really enjoyed the etching process. I am going in again at their next drop in point (Monday) so that I can try aqua tint and make different plates.

Adding pen to the tea party

This is the image I am going to take down to the print room with me in half an hour to see if I could make something similar using etching. I'm keeping this image simple for now so that the guys in the print room can tell me whats best for etching.

Combining the two!

Think I may make a picture of a tea party, with owls. Just so that I have a full image to take into the print room.

Owl Doodles

Just because I can't decide between tea pots and owls!

Tea pot doodles

Real life Teapots

Matt said that as an illustration I should always be working from reference. My first call for images of tea pots was my flat mates lovely green tea pot :) Then I had a look on google images. But with the next day I decided I would do some shopping, and buy nothing... but take some photos of tea pots.