MA Week 41 - Printing and Perusing

Reflection on restarting – 4^th October 2016

 

So, back in the thick of things. Since I gave the paper a couple of weeks ago I’ve made a start on my dissertation and done a bit of printing.

 

I’ve spent quite a bit of time poring over books and perusing papers. My dissertation will have the same theme as my paper but obviously will need more academic rigour, so there’s quite a bit of referencing to do. There was a lot of food for thought about identity and heritage in the symposium itself and some of this has been borne out in the reading I’ve done.

 

I’ve also gone back into the print room. It was strange, restarting, and I made some of the same stupid mistakes I made last term – doh! On Thursday I did some monoprinting. I decided to use grey and black as a change from red and black, but the grey didn’t work brilliantly well. I mixed some white into Payne’s grey and it went really thick. When I scratched into it with the comb, it gathered at the edges of the paper.

 

Some of the Vernon Street staff are now in the Blenheim Walk print room and this means I am getting some additional views and information as obviously everyone has different experiences. This is even better than before! Mick Welbourn advised the use of cobalt drying drops. I completely forgot to put them in the grey but put them in the red. The red ink definitely dried quicker – by the afternoon it was difficult to roll whereas the grey was still going strong. It also dried better on the paper.

 

Rack of monoprints. Happy days!

 

I tried two different types of paper: a coated paper and my usual cartridge paper. The red didn’t work very well on the cartridge at all. On the other hand, it worked really well on the coated paper. Susie (a technician) told me that this paper is used for commercial printing as it’s glossy and takes up the ink really well. You need to do at least one pull on cartridge paper first or the ink overwhelms the (coated) paper. So this is all fodder for my desire to experiment with paper this academic year.

 

On Friday I started to etch a photo I’d taken looking up a pylon. It’s gone a bit astray in places but so far so good. Mick showed me how to ink it using oil paint. You apply the paint onto the plate with a cardboard square then scrape it away and polish it – no scrim. It’s a lot cleaner but I missed the scrimming. And there was no black, just bl**dy Payne’s grey. So I’ll ink it properly when it’s finished.

 

Pylon drypoint - WIP