Tag: prints

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Blackened feathers falling down

For today’s litho* experiments I used a Pentel Arts Pocket Brush Pen** with a new ink cartridge, and Dr. Ph. Martin’s Black Star India Ink. And because I was using ink, I did heat-set these plates.

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.

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Prints Charming

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.

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The ‘Other’ Printmaking

Mid-August update. I’m old so I’ve been busy painting* and waiting for school to start. For all of us.

Erin has made the switch from The Phoenix School summer camp to Star camp at her new elementary school. Big changes for a big girl! Kyle is all registered for 11th grade, though I think he has already lost his schedule. They both start next week. My semester doesn’t start until the 27th. My big change is no photography class this fall (I’m sure I’ll be sneaking into the darkroom on occassion)! I’m finally taking that Printmaking class I’ve been thinking about for a couple years now. Excited and nervous.

So today I decided to break out the Gelli plate, cut some stencils, and make some monotypes.

These are 8.5 x 11

And these are 5.5 x 8.5

These were printed on a smooth heavy paper. There are a couple of them that I might add some ink to – and a few not posted because they need some additional work.  I’ll probably make a few more tomorrow as I just remembered I have a nice sheet of printmaking paper in the front room! yay!

* I have created a piece for this year’s Artists for the Cure event – I’ll post info and a photo soon! I am really enjoying this month’s True Free Spirit project and am on my second painting. And the Visual Quest class has started so I have a canvas in progress on the easel. So much good stuff going on!

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Progress. It’s what’s for dinner.

or Progress. The other white meat. I couldn’t decide.

I hate having to push the picture of Erin-in-the-hood down the page, but life moves on. And so does this blog. Albeit at a much slower pace. But hey! Tomorrow is that thing. The Second Saturday Event at Mather Golf Course that has been ruining my life for the past month and a half. Besides adding the rest of the price tags to the prints, finding my folding chair in the garage, withdrawing cash from the bank for change (which I better well need!), and packing the rest of my stuff – I am done. I think.

I talked to Sharon yesterday afternoon. Told her that at this point in time, I no longer feel the need to cause her physical pain. Although, Chris might, when he goes to balance the checkbook and sees how much money I have spent on this affair! And then I told her that while I was not necessarily looking forward to Saturday, I wasn’t dreading it either. Yup, that’s as much as I was willing to give her. She who finagled-tricked-hoodwinked me into this gig. And she’s already talking about next month! Um, lets wait and see how tomorrow goes first eh?

Hmm. All this brings me back to thoughts of trying to sell prints on-line. I was toying with the idea at the beginning of the year and doing some research into Etsy.com. Going that route, I would post the items for sale, and do the printing and shipping myself. Another option is Imagekind. For them, I would create a gallery (up to 24 images) and they would handle the rest; printing, shipping even framing. Which seems like a no-brainer. Except it’s not. The big problem is aspect ratios. Good god how I hate the whole concept of aspect ratios. The skinny is that my camera’s sensor creates a picture that has the same aspect ratio of a 4×6 print. Now if you go and make an 8×10 print of that file, you are cropping off A LOT of the picture as I had intended it to be! Because I frame my shots in camera. So, using Imagekind puts my photos at risk of unwanted cropping whenever someone orders an innocent 8×10 print. 99% of my photographs do not work at 8x10inchs. The stuff that would be cropped off needs to be there! Ugh. Now I want to hurt someone again. Maybe a mathematician (or Chris). I knew I was correct in blaming math for all my woes.

Oh. I apologize. I spoke too soon. In going to their website to create the above link, I found out that Imagekind “will never change the aspect ratio of your image (the ratio between height and width) or arbitrarily crop your images.” Well, that changes everything. I’ll probably start there and save Etsy for a later date. Depends on how many prints I end up bringing back home tomorrow afternoon.

And I’m not going to edit the above paragraph about Imagekind and aspect ratios because that rant about aspect ratios has been a long time coming! That is why I had to cut so many damn custom mats for tomorrow’s event. When the hell are the mat-makers that supply Michael’s and Aaron Bros going to get on the 3:2 aspect ratio band-wagon?! Half the world is shooting with cameras that have this size image sensor. Make us mats that fit our pictures! Must I do all the work?!

Damn.