printing class

I actually have done something besides edit photos and write blog posts, over the last week. I worked at my day job, stuffed pills down canine throats, ate delicious dinners prepared by my daughter,






and.........

The local quilt guild puts on an extravaganza of classes every other year. This was the year, and last weekend was the weekend.

On Friday I took a print-making class from Deb Gash. We made printing plates from very concentrated (unflavored, unsweetened) gelatin. We put fabric paint on the gelatin plates, and then......................

My first efforts were very dyerly. Not a surprise, I guess, since I haven't made any prints since junior high, but have dyed yards (and yards) of fabric and lots of garments.

The colors make me think of Alaska.....







Deb kept showing us different ways to make marks.

She had a copy of a very cool print by someone who makes a variety of marks in the black ink on his plate before pulling a print. Inspired by that, I launched into a series of prints that clearly show the marks of the brayer (rolling paint onto the gelatin) and scribbles made with two different altered "credit cards." You can't see the dog hair that pervades my work as it does my life (though you can in many of my other prints), but you can see the imperfections in my gelatin plate manifesting themselves in this print, along with my deliberately-made marks.........

I am pretty happy with this. My plate was 8"x12", so my prints are a bit less.






Here's another one I'm happy with.

I rolled paint onto the plate with a brayer, then arranged a piece of cheesecloth on the plate. I pulled a throw-away print (the first ones from this series are yawn-making, but necessary to stick the cheesecloth down well and to remove a bunch of paint where the cheesecloth isn't), then pulled up the cheesecloth and took the real print (without adding any more paint).

Be sure to click on it and see the larger version. Oooh, eh?






I learned that while print-making can be a very fussy and precise business, it can also be loose and easy and experimental. I could never get into the fussy and precise parts (worry about having brayer marks? ack! no thanks!), but the experimental "what happens if I do *this*??" parts -- fun!

I kept wondering how you could get the different effects in Photoshop..... Wouldn't it be cool if you could get the edges you see above where the ink/paint was scraped thinner/thicker by the credit cards?????? Oooooh!