Relief Printmaking Skills Set - Colour Reduction Test Plate

 

During term 2 we have been working on colour reduction prints. You can see how the layers are built up in this video from Harvard Art Museums.

I went random with my colours. Sometimes putting lighter colours over darker colours which gives a speckled effect as some of the first layer shows through subsequent layers. They are super bright!

Relief Printmaking Skills Set - Black & White Urban Landscape

This term at TAFE we were working on an A3 print with the theme "Urban Landscape". We took photos of buildings in Perth; mine is inside the TAFE library. To transfer them onto a lino block we took a laser copy, taped it face down on the block and wet the back with turps. The block was then run through a tight press to transfer the image.

Inside the TAFE library

The blocks were carved with lino tools and printed with oil based block ink. In this print (below) I wiped off some of the ink with a rag to give more white areas and the duct pipes.

We also made an embossed print by using wet paper and a tight press to force the paper into the spaces carved from the lino. You can see my block wasn't super clean but I preferred this to a completely white embossing. 

The next experiment was with chine colle (shin-col-ay). This is a technique where paper (in this case coloured tissue paper) is glued and then lain glue side UP on top of an inked bock. When the print is taken the paper gets glued to the background paper with the print on top. 

Relief Printmaking Skills Set - Black & White Test Plate

 

This week at TAFE we tried out our new lino tools to see how many different marks we could make on an A5 piece of lino. The test block was printed with oil based inks. 

100 Days Project - 6/100

Today I did a reduction print with lino cut. I haven't done a reduction print for ages; it always seems quite an extravagant use of materials as the print block gets destroyed in the process. Below you can see the colour layers as I took more and more of the print block surface away.

Today's sketch was of a small statue I have on my shelf.

Islamic Inspired Lino Cuts

I've taken some of my Islamic tile designs and made them into lino cuts. I took care to make sure that the dimensions allow the different shaped and sized tiles to work together. Here are some simple prints used to check the designs were working.

Islamic Inspired Block Prints

Lately I have been looking at tile patterns from Islamic art and combining them with my star anise motif to create these lino cuts.

You can see that the triangle block is designed to be repeated 6 times to make these hexagons.

The square block can be repeated 4 times to make a shape with a flower-like centre or a cross centre. These combine together again to give the repeat pattern at the top left of the page.

Just because the blocks were designed to go together in a particular way doesn't mean they have to! I experimented with different repeats to make these patterns.

There are many other ways these blocks can be repeated, coloured and combined. Watch this space to see what I come up with.

Totally Addicted to Print

I've been having a fun day today combining lino prints with Gelli® mono-prints and freezer paper stencils. The piece above (and below) is a zig-zag book.

This stylised flower landscape was made using some torn paper masks.

You can see I have been trying out some newly cut, circle, lino blocks.

These are pebble, lino blocks with Gelli® comb prints.

I've also carved some simple erasers into blocks and used them to fill in freezer-paper stencil shapes.

All my printing stuff is still strewn about the table so I think there will be some more prints to show you very soon.