State of the Art: Success and Failures

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I think it’s important to share both my success and my failures on my blog, so that readers can see that everything doesn’t turn out as expected all of the time.

I was really excited about this plate. It’s a bit bigger than some of my others and it’s a subject that I enjoy exploring- the Super Chicken building in my neighborhood. When I first moved here is was… Something else. The owner had painted the lower half of the old brick building bright glossy red. To say it was ugly is an understatement. It was garish and a lot. Recently* they did some renovations and painted the lower half a sedate cream and gray color scheme and installed new gray awnings. Classy.

This image is from a photo I took of the building in it’s old garish glory.

I had hopes of using textured cardstock to create the feeling of the rough painted over bricks and then the brick above that, plus the old concrete of the sidewalk and the beaten up street.

The reality is that I didn’t leave enough room between sections of the cardstock to create the lines I needed to make the darker areas. I had too much of the textured card in some areas and not enough in other areas.

I wiped back the front of the building more to create a lighter area, and left the shadowed section darker, but it all comes out as a similar gray. Largely because the areas that should show lines, aren’t because they are too close together. The result is an image with too little dark, too much gray even tone, and not enough light area.

Anyway. It’s a failure as a finished image but I learned a lot- I need a certain distance between collaged on elements and that the texture doesn’t need to be pronounced to be seen in the final print. Also, when I apply glue to torn out areas, the application must be thick enough to coat all the fibers and rise above them. I’m also noticing that any white glue that I apply becomes crackled when I put the acrylic varnish on. Which this is a good effect for some applications, it’s not the best for everything. Here I really wanted a pure white area in the windows. I might need to switch over to shellac or use the waterbased poly I have instead of the craft varnish.

I keep cataloging things I learned from this process. I really dig the texture sheets I made with modeling paste for this image. I’ll definitely be using them again in the future. While I don’t like to work directly into modeling paste to create an image, this was both fun but also looks great. It is an area to explore in the future.

Every art piece disaster is a learning experience.

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State of the Art: More Recycled Printmaking

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We try not to buy a lot of things in plastic packages that are already in plastic packages. But sometimes it happens. Now I have a way to reuse that packaging that will never get recycled.plastic package etched with skull and daylilies image

Plastic makes a great matrix for dry point. Many people use thin acetate sheets, like the stuff that was used with overheard projectors. You can run them through a printer and print your design on them, well plastic packaging can’t be run through a printer and it’s a bit thicker, but it works great.

skull and daylilies

I left the packaging intact, enjoying the idea of reuse juxtaposed with the living flowers and representation of death with the skull- on a polluting piece of plastic.

I can see where I went wrong with this plastic, areas didn’t need to be so deeply scraped and etched. The lines held up surprisingly well for many passes through the press. Generally dry point plates don’t last a long time, but I managed to run this one through 10 times for 8 good prints! (I managed to damage it when I scraped off ink with a credit card that had a bit of sand on it.)

I used an Exacto blade, upside down, blade pointed up so that the tip and back of the blade scraped through the plastic. It worked really well. The next plastic package I get I’ll be trying my needles.

close up of skull

You can see on the left of the skull where it is a bit over worked and the ink couldn’t be wiped away.Anyway, really excited by this particular reuse.

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State of the Art: Recycling in Printmaking

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Most folx know that I’m devoted to recycling. I started to explore recycled items as part of my printmaking process with the use of heavy card packages- like cereal,  frozen pizza, and seltzer can boxes. As I was flattening the boxes in our bathroom recycling bin, I realized that most of the boxes had a plastic coating, and thus could be used much like aseptic packaging. We’re talking things like facial toner and toothpaste boxes.a stack of flattened packages from toothpaste and beauty supplies.

To start I opened up the boxes and trimmed off any torn or wrinkled areas. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to leave the flaps on the boxes or cut them off, but using the mini press constrains my efforts, so for these, I trimmed them off. They just wouldn’t fit on my paper or press. After that I wiped then down with Simple Green. Finally I ran them through the press to flatten and smooth them.

Some people like to trim off the folds and just use the parts of the boxes that are smooth and flat. I chose to leave the folds to get a larger space for creating images. I ended up with plates roughly 4 x 6 inches.

I’ve been wanting to use toner transfer for awhile so I printed some skulls and brains. I used my chartpack blending marker. It smells like hell and uses xylene but it’s the one thing that I have found that works flawlessly for the toner in my Brother B&W laser printer. I made the mistake of trying to run the whole thing through my mini press between my plates and it hazed the clear acrylic top plate, so that’s fun.

Anyway, no need for the pressure of the press, the marker does the work on its own. I ended up with pretty good transfers on most of the packages. I combined these transfers with some freehand sketching with a sharpie. The sharpie doesn’t seem to transfer from this packaging to the final prints. It does with other plates.

Finally I scratched and scored into the card with an Exacto and a needle. I also used a ball embossing tool. All worked pretty well. For larger dark areas I cut into the plastic and card with the Exacto and peeled away areas of the plastic and card. Most of this packaging has the plastic layer, plus a super smooth very sealed layer of card, then the pulpy fiber layer of card. Finally the plates were sealed with a top coat of water based varnish. Normally I seal the edges and back of the cards, but wanted to get printing. This was a mistake. The edges of the cards hold a lot of ink and can make for a VERY mess printing experience.

Inking was done intaglio style. I used a brush to lay down ink and push it into my lines. I ended up using a silicone scraper to push more ink in and scrape off the surface ink. After that the surface ink was wiped away leaving behind a bit of plate tone to make a more interesting print.

Skull and flames

I really dig the dark flames at the top. They were cut and peeled. You can also see where the package imprint wiped cleaner than the surrounding area. If I’d been thinking I’d have carved and peeled this away too.

skull and forked tongue

I’m not pleased with this one, the tongue doesn’t slide through the sockets properly and is distorted. I probably won’t print this one again.

nerves

This one is fun, I’ve always liked the image of nerves running through the body. I just embellished. You can see the embossed details of the package.

brain, skull and flames

meh. I won’t be printing more.

As you can see from the pictures these little plates make really interesting images and print surprisingly well. With the exception of the Pixi box. That coating seemed to get a bit sticky with the ink. It might do better with Akua or other watersoluble inks. But it did not like the Speedball Supergraphic Black ink.

It was a lot of fun making these plates and printing them. It’s very freeing to use trash to make art.

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State of the Art: Return of the Mini Press

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Yesterday marks the Return of the Mini Press! As much as getting the press was a pain in the rear, the customer service person who I dealt with was lovely.

Now that I know more about the press, and I’m checking pressure with EVERY plate change, it’s working great. I spent a few hours and inked up a few plates and it was really nice to work on the prints.

I wanted to focus on one print and plate. The inked plate.

The plate is made up of 3 sheets of cardstock cut from a pizza box. I laminated this together with regular old white glue (PVA if ya fancy) and put the whole stack in my book press for a few hours. I then let this dry in my drying rack.

I sketched directly onto the plate with pencils. I went over that with an extra fine Sharpie. This was okay because I knew I’d be sealing the plate. I have found that under pressure and with the use of the Speedball Supergraphic ink, unsealed sharpie lifts onto the print. It makes a halo the color of the Sharpie. Annoying.

After that I cut shapes and peeled the paper back. I etched into the plate with a needle and craft knife. When I was happy with my base image, I went back into the image with a liquid matte medium and sand mix*. I brushed this onto areas I wanted to be deeply dark. I used a q-tip (cotton bud) to move the sandy mix around a bit. Then I wanted to try something fancy, I coated the light area in the sky with that white glue. I knew that with the amount of moisture in the air (it’s been humid AF here) that when I coated the sky area with the acrylic based varnish I use, it would crackle, but be mostly white. I was right. Even if I hadn’t been I had known in advance I wanted that area light. The crackles  were purposeful and look, to me, much like thin branches you see in the sky when you look up through a tree canopy.detail of the crackle sky detail of the crackle sky

A thing that I noticed is that the rough areas of the plate- in the trees and large swatches of dark, it starts to break down. That card from the recycling bin is very absorbent. I’ll start adding a thicker layer in those areas from now on, but I’m going to reapply more varnish over those areas. detail of the cabin

I also need to “wet-pack” my paper. Basically, Spritz down the paper I’ll use for my printing session with clean water, stack them together in a plastic bag, and then print with the resulting soft damp paper. I’ve been printing with dry paper or paper that has been lightly misted just before rolling it through the press. Since I’m cutting quite deeply into my card the paper has to be soft enough to make it into every nook and cranny. small print of a cabin in the woods, small cabin is overshadowed by large trees Mini press, purple and white press Continue reading →

State of the Art: Printmaking Woes

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I had a grand idea- and it has given me some printmaking woes!

The idea was simple- combine my bad brains relief blocks with dendritic monoprints. The look is AMAZING. The process works okay. I kinda like how the texture of the thick acrylic paint breaks up the thick black of the relief print. Next time around I’ll use a thinner more liquid paint though.

The woe? It does not want to dry, at all. I’ve written a few Insta posts that my relief prints using Speedball Supergraphic Black ink looks great but take forever to dry, it turns out that my studio is just too humid. So I’ve been using the car baking method of print drying- the prints get spread out in the back of my car to dry. Depending on the weather and length of time I’ve dried them in the basement, it takes anywhere from 8 hours to 2 days for them to dry.

So the bad brains in my car now- the brains printed on paper? Dry and perfect. Brain bits on the glossy thick acrylic paint? Still slick.

I might need to break down and pick up some cobalt or other drying agent to get this ink to actually dry. I really want to avoid using those since they are wildly poisonous. No matter what I do I end up with ink on my hands. I’m also going to try a few other water soluble oil based inks. I tried the Speedball fabric ink, in brown, and even without heat it did dry.

State of the Art: Alternative Presses for Printmaking

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A few posts back I mentioned my deep dive into YouTube and how it woke my interest in alternative presses for printmaking.

Back in my undergrad years I’d heard about people using a variety of different tools to make prints, top among them the tortilla press! Way back then I attempted to make my own press from scrap wood my Dad had laying around and it was a pretty dismal failure. I know a lot more now than I did then. I probably should have asked my Dad for help in building the little press. After that I built another press with 2 thick slabs of crappy plywood, 4 long bolts, some wingnuts, and a handle. It worked well enough but I soon used it more for pressing notebooks than anything else.

Somewhere along the way I bought the little 5×8 Speedball press. Back then they were a more reasonable $30, currently they run $90! (Though available at most discount art suppliers for around $70!)  Good investment. Though I had initial terrible luck with getting smooth even prints with it. Live and learn, literally. It needs a pusher to even out the pressure from the lid if you are going to print in the upright traditional manner.  The Speedball relief press works on the same idea as a tortilla press- hinged lid and a lever for pressure. That’s all you really need to make a relief print.

Then there’s the Open Press Project, which is a miniature (very tiny) 3D printed press. You can print it yourself for the cost of time and filiments or buy one ready made. They offer them at cost and also at a bit of a profit- a pay what you can offering. Even at the base cost of just materials, it costs well over $100. I’m not sure what it would cost if you were to 3D print it your self. There’s also a proofing press, called the F-Press that you can purchase from the designer. YouTube and instructables are littered with instructions for building your own presses.

Of course there is the good old wooden spoon or rolling pin. If you want an upgrade from a rolling pin, there’s the stainless steel Akua pin press, aka a fancy stainless steel rolling pin.

Or homemade barens? I’ve wrapped a few cardboard rounds in news paper and fabric and secured that with masking tape to burnish the backs of prints. I’ve read about people putting flat head push pins into a block of wood and burnishing with that. Or gluing a fist full of toothpicks into a cardboard tube!

All of these ideas allow you to put pressure onto the back of  the art to get a good relief print. Sometimes they work for intaglio process, sometimes not.

But the idea of a craft embossing press as an etching press? That was new to me.

This led me to looking into other ideas for getting the slightly higher pressure needed for intaglio style printing.

Pasta makers!!! You can feed small thin intaglio sheets and paper with felt through the largest setting of a pasta maker!

Other folks still will print their work by sandwiching their plates between pieces of plywood and running over it with their car a few times! Often printmakers will have an event where they’ll rent a steam roller for a day or two and spend a day making massive 4x8ft prints in parking lots. I’ve never been to one of these events but I’m always interested when I see the resulting images and photos of folx having a ton of fun.

Or what about those cold roll manual laminators? I saw a guy on youtube using one for relief prints, he reported using it for an etching but couldn’t say that it would last. But he’d made over 4000 lino and relief prints on the one inexpensive cold laminator!

If you are old enough you remember “knuckle busters” or the old school credit card imprint tools that were used at check out. You’d get a little carbon copy of your receipt. One person has repurposed a knuckle buster (So called because cashier often ran their knuckles over the store’s info on the bed of the machine, which hurt… a lot!) to print little relief prints.

Learn from my mistake- most of these alternative presses can give you the pressure you need for collagraph and other intaglio style work, but you need to take care with the amount of pressure you apply and adjust it for every material (my big error) you run through it. If you are pressing relief prints you don’t need intaglio pressure! The press roller just needs to exert enough pressure for an even print, and most can do it at a lower pressure than you expect.

Because I had a rather traditional printmaking education I was stuck in the idea that I needed wool felt blankets for printing intaglio style. I’ve since learned that this isn’t the case. Almost any material with little grain or pattern will work. So craft or fun foam, mouse pads, yoga mats (any pattern squishes out of them), cheaper recycled plastic craft felt, neoprene rubber, and a variety of other less natural materials will work. They are also significantly cheaper than traditional wool blankets. With the little craft presses or cold press laminators, you may even need less packing than in a large press. IF the rollers are rubberized then they may give a bit of the cushioning you need to get a decent imprint and adding additional blankets actually decreases the pressure.

Wool blankets are so expensive that a kevlar blanket protector was developed by Keith Howard (1998) in the 90s to protect them! I have distinct memories of fellow students getting worried about getting ink on the blankets and hoping the professor wouldn’t notice. When I first read about using foam and other materials I balked then realized that use of these new materials opens the door for more people to be able to take part in printmaking. Cheaper newer materials opens the door for more people to explore and enjoy printmaking.

Anyway, if you have used anything interesting to make prints, leave a comment and tell me about it!

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State of the Art: Relief Prints

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Welp, all good things come to an end, and I managed to overwhelm the mini press and 2 teeth on one of the gears sheered off, one pretty cleanly, the other… is half there. If I can find a gear it’s a pretty straight forward repair. I have an email out to the company to see if I can get a new gear or get the thing repaired but the company has changed names and the support email bounced back. There have been numerous reports online of the company not responding to customer service requests. So not good. If I can’t get help from them, I’ll see if I can get a new gear made for me. Also, lesson learned, check and adjust roller/bead height before attempting to print ANYTHING. While a full sized etching press would have powered through, these little presses can’t do the same, something had to give.

I have owned a Speedball relief press for close to 20 years. I had dismal results with it back when I first tried it and set it aside. Recently I saw it being used on a relief print video and had a “well, duh!” moment. I was using it wrong. The little press needs a pusher felt! Or to be used face side down. Another video led me to using pieces of yoga mat or fun foam as the pusher felt.

And here’s my little mind BLOWN!

Hot damn this thing does great stuff with my little brain print.

So the brain print is part of a series I’m working on, to be revealed soon. But it is also part of my deep dive into recycled stuff as a substrate for my carving.

One of the many things I’ve been wanting to explore is recycled things for printmaking. I’ve tested out a bunch of other stuff from frozen pizza boxes to tetra packs to soda cans. They all work, but this stuff might be the holy grail. Big words I know. It’s a number 5 plastic, which doesn’t recycled well in curbside recycling* so my use of it as a printing substrate is a good second use.

It’s plentiful in my area and I can get enough of it to possibly last a lifetime.

Better yet, it cuts like buttah with my cheapo linocut tools. Oddly my nicer set isn’t fond of it. That said I was able to cut through the block and get this printed pretty quickly. I do need to figure out how to stain the material so I can see what I have cut and haven’t cut, because the white on white is hard to see, even with a bright light. Sharpie slide off the surface and eventually became a fuzzy mess.

I’ve got more to explore in terms of how this went from a quick little scribble in my sketchbook to being applied to the block and how it transformed through the use of the tools and my understanding of them. Really stoked and I’ll share more pics of the process and material.

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State of the Art: Alternative Plates for Printmaking

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Of the many things I’ve been exploring in my studio is the idea of alternative plates. This might be why I really like collagraph. Everything about collagraph is the use of alternative plates. Certainly there are some folx that always use plexi plates as their surface but many other artists use built up surfaces of cardboard, cardstock, discarded packaging and other things. Collagraph has led me down the path of looking at other things I can use as plate (surface for etching or working on) to make other sorts of prints, like the intaglio technique of drypoint.

Like lino or wood cuts drypoint involves cutting into the plate. Drypoint is the opposite in that those incised lines are what prints black- ink is forced into the lines, excess is wiped away and then the left behind lines are printed. It feels more like drawing than other methods of printing where the lines removed are what prints.

The difficult part about making prints from recycled materials, especially when using a press, is that the press pressure must be adjusted for every material. I’m finding that some of the recycled materials only give a few decent prints before the pressure of the press warps the materials. I see why so many printmakers will find a material that works and sticks with it.

Since I’m exploring recycled materials I’m finding myself looking at certain things and thinking, “I only have a few of these, but they print so good.” I’m trying to find a few materials that are easily found that I can use regularly and not worry about them running out. It’s not easy.

Things that I like for collagraph- packaging from soda cans, froze foods, and other pulpy brown card. This stuff can be glued together in layers the cut and scored and peeled to gain incredible depth and texture. It also holds enough carborundum or sand to make really amazing texture. Coated with a thick layer of varnish keeps it printing for a decently sized edition. The difficulty is that the packaging varies in thicknesses.

I did a few tests with soda cans mounted to packaging materials. The soda can materials warp as I scribed into the soft metal and then warped even more as I printed. I was able to get 3 good prints but the lines degraded noticeably by the final, 4th print. While this is fine for my ko-fi followers, I’d really like to be able to do an edition of 13* for everything.

Many printmakers like to use plexiglass and other clear sheet plastic. I’m trying to avoid this since I don’t want to make more plastic waste, I’m hoping to find something recycled that I can source regularly and easily.

 

*Why 13? I like the number.

Review: Narwhal Yellow Tang Fountain Pen

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Narwhal Yellow Tang fountain pens popped up on my radar towards the end of 2020, and like many things in 2020, they stayed there on the edges of my vision, not being capitalized upon. Though they were in the running as a celebratory pen for purchase when I snagged my new job. When Goldspot reached out and offered me one to review I jumped on it fast! The little bubble wrapped package arrived in my mailbox a week or so later and I wasted no time cutting it open and peeking at the contents. I’d left it up to Goldspot to pick a color, though I was tempted to request a demonstrator. I am very pleased with the Yellow Tang original that arrived.

The packaging is understated but also giftable. While I appreciate a nice gift box, I appreciate being able to recycle the box more. It’s simple with modest and cute branding. The card box is lined with thick foam that holds the pen and wrench secure for transportation. I like it.

The yellow and white swirled acrylic is lovely and vibrant. While gold nibs and furniture aren’t my favorites I think silver would look odd on a yellow pen and the accents of gold trim look great on this acrylic. I almost regret that I filled it with with black ink, but even boring black ink (for sketching) it looks amazing. The yellow and white pop against the darkness of the ink. The piston moves effortlessly and takes a deep fill of ink. Usually I measure the fill, but I really just wanted to get it filled so I could draw.

In use I find that the pen is a nice size and not too heavy. I don’t usually post my caps and though the cap on the Narwhal is technically postable, I found that it made the pen off balanced and overly long. The clip allowed me to attach the pen to my sketchbook or into my pen case for safe keeping. It’s sturdy and feels as though it will last.

I’ve used this pen for awhile now and it lays down a generous but not too wet line of ink that works great for writing and sketching. it doesn’t seem to dry out when I let it sit while I use my brush pen for a few minutes to blur and blend lines.

Overall I really like the pen. The nib is great and a nice size and the acrylic pops. Even their special edition acrylics are affordable. At $50 it’s not cheap but more along the lines of Moonman or even the TWSBI Eco. I have to say that when it is compared to the Eco, I like the style of the Narwhal better. I like the overall color scheme and the fact that it feels a bit more sleek. It is a pretty traditional fountain pen style, the original in black would fit in anywhere, while the fun colors offer a bit of fun to any writing or sketching experience. When compared to Moonman, Narwhal stands out as their designs are classics and not riffs on another company’s designs. They don’t feel like a mishmash of ideas hastily tossed together. This pen also feels of higher overall quality. If you are looking for a piston filling pen for sketching, the fine nibbed Narwhal stands out as a solid choice.

Narwhal as a company stands out from the field of less expensive fountain pens in that the company backs up its products and if you head to their website you can see the owners. I like the idea that I’m supporting a small company and even specific people, that stand behind their products. That feels important to me as a consumer and reviewer. *

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State of the Art: Printmaking Play

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I’ve been deep in art play mode lately. I apologize for the lack of pen posts and overwhelm of printmaking play posts. I do have a review partially completed for a great pen that I should be posting soon.

Printmaking has been a passion of mine for a long time but lack of a press and interest in other art making has taken up much of my time over the last few years.  I think that the last time I posted here about printmaking was when my friend Jane and I made gelatin plates over ten years ago! (Just writing about them makes me want to make more gelatin plates!)

I’ve been testing out how different materials collagraph- what they look like and how they stand up. I also purchased a pot of Speedball SuperGraphic Black and a tube of their fabric ink in brown.  The SG Black is taking forever to dry, but it’s also been incredibly humid and cold here. The fabric ink started to set up as I rolled it out. But both inks look great- on paper and fabric!

With collagraphs building the plate is just one part of making the image, inking is the second part, but the most important is wiping. In this final last part of the process, like etching, the printmaker controls how much of the ink is left on un etched areas of the plate and how much wiping will occur, also, if any texture is left in that ink. Changing one aspect of the wipe can almost completely change the image!

The fun little mini press aka embossing tool that I purchased allows me to play around not only with lino, wood, and collagraphic prints but etchings too! ‘

Many people make etchings into aseptic packaging- soy milk packages and the like. Any plastic lined multi-layered item will work. I managed to get my hands on an assortment of old advertising items- mini white boards with old calendars, decks with missing cards, and old advertising posters. All of these things have a plastic layer over cardstock and work great for mini etchings.

I did a few tests of prints and use of different materials for etchings and I’m really pleased with how they came out. This of course leads me to more ideas for the process.