Unfinished Business

after missing a session it was essential for us to catch up on unfinished work i took the liberty of finishing the work in the intaglio and reverse intaglio processes rather than giving myself more work to finish. i thought this was a wise idea and gave me an opportunity to relax a little, plus i had already done mono-printing once so i don't think it will take me long to complete. i ended up finishing both projects with time to spare so i started making some stencils for mono-printing. 

good times.

Books for Brains

and indeed they are. taking on a similar process to what we have been doing previously we were working on an inverse of the intaglio process.

for the first part of the process we were to carve an image out of our choice onto a sheet of lino, although it wasn't  actually lino more of a rubbery substitute, using carving tools made by germans apparently the italians do a very bad job. :s 

the image that i selected to use was an image of a brain. after looking at the success of the image based on the heart i thought i would continue my exploration into parts of the human body. i chose to look at one of the essential human organs, the brain. how do you show a brain? i started by looking at the brain on google and chose a few images to work with. i began thinking like a graphic designer i started thinking about dehydration and how that would affect the size of your brain, having a small brain and a big brain, the connotations, is your brain hydrated? i think this would be perfect for a water company campaign of something or an education campaign. 

anyway the process we were looking at today looked at the reverse intaglio process. ink is rolled onto the plate of lino which has been carved, the ink sits on the top of the plate and not into the marks that have been made into the surface, they are left untouched. 

the process gave some very aesthetickal results and the images were very pleasing. 

i started thinking about christmas as well and i think this would be great for a book cover for my sister studying psychology. books are indeed for brains.

sorry Roger but unfortunatly i was really ill so couldn't come to your session. i'm on the mend and i'll be there next week. in the mean time i'll find something to print. 

Intaglio

i've decided to produce a separate blog for my extra studies in printmaking. i thought this would be really useful for putting photos and my work up. i think i will probably digitize most of my print work anyways rather than laboriously cutting and sticking things in to sketchbooks and blogging has almost become a second nature.
back to the first print workshop. roger gave use our induction and unfortunately i had to go through the safety procedures for yet a third time, i think i could actually give a tour myself. after a lengthy 45 minute induction we began our first practical part, the intaglio process. a basic printing process which involves making marks into a surface to which ink or oil-paint which we used soaks into. having done this before i knew the possibilities straight away and bared no hesitation into getting stuck into this project.
i started looking at hearts again, using the print process to give them a better visual quality. i think this worked really well and the outcome looked bloody and messy which was exactly the feel of the image. normally for valentines a heart is depicted in a cliche curved 'feminine' form bearing little resemblance to what an actual heart look like. i want to produce a range of valentines cards based on the theme of what an actual heart looks like. i think it would be fascinating to look at something such as body parts in relation to something like valentines day which is a bit conservative.
i do feel that i have already pushed some bounds in print-making, i feel that using the print making as a tool of my trade i can use this to my advantage without taking on an extra workload on my degree. i do however think that using print-making will better refine my work and give it more of a raw and ready look than a neat edge. i aim to be a print-making master.