Michael Gage

Looking for easier ways of applying colours to black-and-white linocuts, I tried the chine collé method which is more commonly used in etching.

I cut the tissue paper to shape, glued the back of it with PVA, put it on the inked linoblock, and then printed it.

It didn't work. Glue everywhere, except on the tissue paper, which floated and moved around.


Then I tried sticking the tissue paper to the printing paper. When it was dry, I printed the block on top. The extra thickness of the tissue paper made it more difficult to burnish, so I tried thinner printing paper. This was more successful. For this example, I used kraft paper instead of tissue paper.


Fiddling with tiny bits of tissue paper gets frustrating quickly. So I cut larger pieces, aligning them only roughly with the image.


This is starting to work.

Even better when I didn't trim the paper to the shape of the block.

I made this black and white linocut, inspired by a recent session at our life drawing group.



Bella and the cello. Linocut, 10 x 15 cm.

As a quick way of adding some colour, I printed the block onto yellow paper...



... and then onto brown kraft paper...



... and then in ultramarine ink on white paper.

This week at my printmaking class, everyone rose to the challenge of working with found textures. Starting with the principle that "If you can ink it, you can print it", we experimented with applying ink to as many different surfaces as we could find, and explored the best way of printing them, combining collagraph, stamping and transfer techniques.

Carol

Jennifer

Louise

More information about the printmaking class.

More colour experiments with the styrofoam print.

I printed the background in different shades of green, cut away the leave outlines, and then printed it again in a different shade. Then I printed the bird shape on top.





I think this last one is the most successful:



Finally, I printed the bird on its own.

More experimenting with sytrofoam prints: this time, trying to work out how to get more colour into the print. First, I checked that the drawing was adequate by printing it in black.



I applied coloured ink using card tabs and paper.



Then I cut out the hummingbird from the background, and inked the parts separately.



I carved more of the background, and then printed the plates again.



More experiments to follow...

In preparation for the printmaking course that I am teaching at the South East School of Art, I've been experimenting with styrofoam printmaking. Styrofoam is the soft plastic that you find under pizzas sometimes. It's very easy and quick to work with.

I started with a drawing of a street in Trastevere in Rome. I indented the drawing onto an A4 sheet of styrofoam, inked it, and then printed it by hand. I first printed the block in black; the lines that I indented onto the block appear as white.



Then I printed the block in white ink onto black paper, so this time the lines that I indented show as positive marks.



The ink is a bit blotchy in places where I applied too much.

A quick way of adding colour is to print onto coloured paper. Here's the block again, printed on red paper.



Finally, I cut away some of the block where I wanted bigger light areas, and printed it in warm brown sienna onto light brown pastel paper.

The new printmaking class that I'm teaching at the South East School of Art got off to a flying start this evening. Concentrating on techniques and methods that are easy and safe to reproduce at home, the students learnt how to create prints from one of the simplest yet most surprising materials: styrofoam. Manipulating the block in different ways quickly leads to piles of colourful prints that have a special effect that's unique to the medium.

We proved that you can "have your pizza, and print it".


Carol's strong graphic image of flowers had a Japanese feel to it.



Louise's confident use of colour enhanced her image of King Arthur's face on the Holy Grail.



Jennifer's strong leaf image explored different ways of making marks and textures with the medium.



Bill's abstracted landscape showed a good sense of design.

Burnt sienna and red printed over the second layer. I used a paper mask to isolate the areas where I wanted these colours to appear.

Ink and watercolour on paper, A4.

A darker layer of blue and grey, and some of the details start to appear.