Reflection
on the last week – 1st August 2016
I finally made it
back into the Print Room last Friday, and what’s more, I was in the company of
my classmate Sue, which made it even better.
I’d asked Sue if
she would be kind enough to come in as she is a much more advanced printmaker
than I, and I wanted to pick her brains. It’s been quite hard plodding on with
the printing without the community of my MA mates in their critical friend
role. We chatted for about an hour at lunchtime and I showed her some of my
monoprints. There were some that I’d thought were finished, but then I wasn’t
so sure – should I work into them further? Sue agreed that they were finished. We talked about the fact
that you can work on a monoprint indefinitely as it’s such a free process – you
rarely start it with a definite end product in mind. Sue was also interested in
an idea that I keep toying with, that is, to cut some of the prints into
squares and form a “mosaic”. I’d more or less shelved the idea but her
enthusiasm has persuaded me that I should resurrect it. So that’ll be to do
later this week, then.
In the printroom
itself, I experimented with a few different textures in monoprinting and kept
the little squares of card I’d used as resists and which now had the textured
print on them. I might collage them or present them somehow. Then I moved onto
pulling last week’s drypoint. It worked quite well and I also printed it over a
monoprint. Lots of scope there for mixing the two print types and I’m hoping I
might be able to get another couple of examples before hand-in. I’d also like
to work into the drypoint plate a little more but I’m not sure I’ve got the
time to do that. I really need to move onto getting everything together for the
hand-in now.
 |
| New drypoint plus monoprints |
We had an issue
with the much-loved Albion press as it had somehow got uneven pressure and it
warped Sue’s 50x50cm aluminium plate – I was mortified. Toni, the technician,
rectified it as best she could but it still wasn’t right – I pulled a print off
the pylon plate and it warped that too. There wasn’t time to sort it out fully
so I hope it is back in action for later this week.
Toni was
bookbinding so that’s on my to do list now also – ideas of using the monoprints
as book covers or as pages within a notebook. She advised me to keep coming to
the print room next term even though the dissertation is likely to take over,
even if to just do a couple of monoprints. That way, she said, I wouldn’t lose
the “feel” of printmaking. Sounds like wise words and I will try to keep it up
if I possibly can.
Otherwise endless
catching up with creative journal – I am now only 3 weeks behind!
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