Huh. I really thought I had posted more of my adventures in litho printmaking, but apparently not since my last post was July 24. I really am trying to keep some momentum going here in Elfiniland…
Anyways, I was on a mad litho printing run for the rest of July and into the first week of August. I was listening to a lot of Ghost (prepping for the concert on Aug 10!) and had a bit of a theme developing:
RIP Ozzy. If I recall correctly (and that is a big IF!) the plates for these prints were all done with india ink and heat set.
I tried printing a couple plates that I ran through my laser printer instead of drawing directly on the plate. The plates looked good, but I had some trouble getting nice prints from them. I’ll have to try this method again to see if I can get better results.
On Aug 7th my oldest and dearest friend Erik came out from Detroit for his annual visit, and we planned a trip within a trip and did a speed run to San Diego for Erin’s first concert!
Ghost in San Diego. Photo by Ryan Chang.Bakersfield. You can see the crazy building behind their eyes!
An absolutely crazy 7 days full of way too much laughing and freeways!
And then the fall semester at Sierra started and I’ve spent the last 3 weeks screenprinting.
The plate on the left was drawn with the India Ink. I used the dip pen to outline the feather and then a brush to paint on the ink. The plate on the right was drawing with the Pentel brush pen.
I started by printing the brush pen falling feather plate first. It took many prints on newsprint to build up ink on the plate, but I managed an okay print.
The first test print of the India ink feather grabbed all the ink!
I switched to the good paper and then made 4 prints. After the first print which is obviously over-inked, I switched brayers, laid down less ink and stopped running the plated back through the press a second time and got better prints.
So, the brush pen and the Dr Martin’s India ink and both viable options for making plates. I’m really excited that the lines made with the dip pen showed up. I don’t really like drawing with Sharpies, but I love love love drawing with ink. I think I might just stick with the India ink for awhile while I work on getting the inking and printing of the plates dialed in.
*Pronto Plate Lithography. Please don’t make me type that out every time.
** I should get a 2nd pen just to keep an almost empty cartridge in because that makes some amazing dry brush textures. I also didn’t know that they had gray and sepia cartridges. Want! I’ll pick up another one the next time I go to Blick Art Supplies.
So far in my barely started Pronto Plate Lithography journey, I have been heat-setting all my plates in the oven. 3 mins at 250 degrees. Yesterday I decided to see what I could make work without heat-setting the plate. I decided to test Sharpies, my Zig marker, and a china maker.
On the first plate I used the Ultra Fine Point Sharpie to make my drawing. I then grabbed the standard Fine Point Sharpie and went over the dark areas and some of the lines.
As you can see, the lines drawn with the Ultra Fine Sharpie didn’t pick up any ink. I wasn’t surprised as I think that I had the same issue on one of my earlier plates. So after a couple attempts on newsprint, I set that plate aside as I didn’t think it was going to get any better.
The second plate was drawn with the Zig calligraphy marker. I used both ends and then went in the china marker to shade some areas:
For the third plate I only used the china marker:
Yeah, that works.
In fact, the china marker works almost too well. That plate picked up a lot of ink!
So what did we learn? Toss the Sharpie Ultra Fine back in the drawer. There is no need to heat-set a regular Sharpie, the Zig marker, or the china maker drawing. And the china marker drawings need fewer passes of the charged brayer. Those babies are gonna take a while to dry.
Next up – brush pens and india ink. And I’m still trying to find a ballpoint pen that works.
Whether it is photography or printmaking, I am always making prints. My friend Christopher always makes a joke that someday my “prints” will come – a riff on ‘Someday my prince will come.’ He’s like that.
Well, he has finally found his true love and is getting married next weekend! I can’t think of any princess jokes that would apply. Maybe something about if the shoe fits… I don’t know. They met at the dog park … ??
Yeah, there is no good place to go with that so I’ll just leave the bad jokes to him and just carry on being so damn happy for them.
I’m thinking about that joke today because of this:
A rack full of drying prints that I’ve made this week! 12 that I made just this morning. Erin has forbidden me from singing Pharrell Williams’ “Happy”, but I am. Happy happy happy.
I’ve recently switched things up (who’s surprised?) and have started making collagraphs. When I made collagraphs in the past, I had built up the surfaces on the base and rolled the ink with a brayer and printed the plates as relief prints. Now I am cutting into the matboards and intaglio-inking into the recesses. I seem to have found my peace with the tarlatans and wiping plates. Who knows, maybe there are etchings in my future?
And then there are the lithographs. After the Pronto Plate Lithography workshop I took last month, I immediately ordered all the things I would need to do this process at home. After testing several different pens, markers, and ink, it seems the china marker is giving me the best results so far:
::insert happy dance here::
I’ll keep experimenting. I know there is a pen/marker that will give me the thin lines I want. I also need to get some toner powder. And for the pronto plate-curious, I am heat setting my plates in the oven for 3 mins at 250 degrees.
Hit me up if you’ve got questions or advice! I am wingin’ it here.
Well, 5 years after covid blew up my little art world, I am not only making art again, I am showing art again!! In fact, I have pieces in 2 shows this month.
Erin and I both have pieces in the annual Membership Medley at Blue Line Arts in Roseville.
My piece is a monotype “Damaged” that I made last fall during my gell plate printing phase. And Erin’s piece is the first portrait that she painted! She kicks ass as I’m sure I’ve said before.
The 3rd Saturday Reception is July 19th from 5-7pm
The second show I am in is The Art of Printmaking at The MACC. This show is really exciting for me as it was juried and my first lithograph was accepted!
The reception was last weekend, but the show is up until July 26th and I can’ recommend it enough. So much great work – and all printmaking! ::swoon::
Well then. The “Adobe Bullshit/Update All the Websites/Rinse and Repeat and then Rage Blog About It!” appears to have run its course. In fact the pendulum seems to have swung to the other side and I have gone back to ignoring my website completely.
Hot and cold baby. Hot and cold.
I blame my failed t-shirt empire. Thanks a lot TeePublic.
I was happily learning the “beyond the basics” of Illustrator and Photoshop by watching a bunch of tutorials – ask the neighbors how loudly I screamed when I discovered the “Remove Background” button in the Quick Actions of Photoshop! This ain’t your grandfather’s CS4! Somewhere in the midst of all of that I made a logo for Ink & Bone Alchemy and thought “Hey, this would be a cool t-shirt!”
And since some of my current favorite tees are from TeePublic, I took that little lightbulb and ran with it. I created a shop, uploaded the graphic and ordered a tshirt and a sticker. Sweet. Then I took the new abbreviated shop name, inknbone, and grabbed the domain name and made a new email address to use (my name is sooo many letters, ugh so much typing). Then I changed the tag line on the logo with the plans to sell them in my new TeePublic shop. I had big plans, I was going to “make the t-shirts you want to wear in the world”! I logged back into TeePublic. And so that I wouldn’t have to start a new listing from scratch, I copied the original t-shirt listing and switched out the graphic and updated the entry title and some of the tags and hit save. Then TeePublic coughed up a lung and played dead. Okay, I’ll deal with it in the morning. Well, come the morning and I had an email in my inbox informing me that my TeePublic account has been deleted for a “violation of Terms and Conditions”. What the actual fuck?!
On the bright side, they did process my order and now I have a nice one of a kind t-shirt and sticker. And I have found another provider to make stuff that I can sell myself on that new-fangled website I built, when and if the mood ever strikes again. Who knows, that was a month ago. I’m kinda in this weird bardo state – the sewing machine is out, but I haven’t felt like making new bags even though all the pieces are cut and ready. I pulled the ink and brayers out to do some printmaking, but that didn’t really go anywhere. I need to cut a couple mats for some prints I bought, but ugh, I would need to move the sewing stuff to do that. So yeah…
I did decide to do another Inktober run – a drawing a day for a month – this time using prompts from Retro Supply Co. I probably should get on today’s drawing. I wasn’t planning on writing a blog post today (I’m not even sure what prompted me to go to my site) and I’m really not sure why I suddenly started in on this whole t-shirt saga, I mean, I shot a gun yesterday and I didn’t write about that?!
