I am a printmaker. It's one of the things I'm proud to say about myself.
Printmaking is not just a craft, but a way of looking at the world. And
one of my life's greatest delights is when I can share this craft and
lens with others. Today I was fortunate to have the opportunity to share
it with a bunch of kids.
How to make a simple dry-point intaglio print:
|
First scrape down and round off the edges of your plate. Then plan your work with a permanent marker on the plate. |
|
Then use an etching scribe to scratch the design into the plate. We used acrylic plates first. |
|
Then we used zinc
for the second round of prints. The scribe cuts a groove into the
surface that has a burr on one side (and sometimes on both sides). This
groove will hold the ink during printing. |
|
When the plate is
run through the press, the wet paper is pressed into all the grooves,
and around the plate, giving a noticeable relief to the print. We can
take advantage of this by carving the plate to form an interesting 3-D
effect when it's printed. |
|
When using only lines for depth of colour, texture, and form, it can take a very long time to get the whole plate finished. |
|
Some scribes are
easier to create deeper lines with, but in the end inking is as much or
perhaps even more important to the outcome of the print than the lines
themselves. |
|
Ahhh... ink.
Thick and sticky, it needs to be mixed well on the glass plate using
little cardboard paddles. I don't have a photo of the paper, but
generally when we start inking a small plate is a good time to start
soaking the thick, fibrous intaglio paper. This ensures that the pulp of
the paper will be moveable and will push well into all the crannies of
the plate. |
|
|
Then the ink is wiped onto and rubbed into the etching plates. |
|
Using a smooth paper, we then have to wipe all extraneous ink off
the plate! Technically, all the lines (grooves) should hold the ink
while it wipes relatively cleanly from the smooth upper surface.
However, the wiping can be tweaked in many different ways to allow for a
lot of rich moody tones and layers of depth. |
|
Finally, the
wiped plate is laid on the press bed, hands washed (for the umpteenth
time in this process!), the wet paper laid carefully over the plate, and
then a sheet of newsprint and three layers of wool felt. And then we slowly and steadily run it through the tightly-wound press. |
|
And this
is what it's all for! That moment when we peel back the paper and
discover what we've created!! No two prints are entirely alike, and
every time we peel back the paper it feels a bit like a gift. |
Between 2-hour-long sessions of intaglio practice, we
went out for a very wet rainforest picnic, and to see if we could find
some nature-made prints. We found our own footprints, first, then the
print left by lichen that has fallen off a tree. We found the hole in the
ground left by an uprooted tree, and even an owl pellet! We decided it
qualified because, like all prints, it's a mark left by something
departed - an impression of the past and a clue about past events.
|
owl pellet |
Prints often have a feeling of melancholy, because of the inherent
absence or loss involved in their making. We breathed on the studio
windows and made prints of our faces in the steam. They were gone by the
end of the day. It's good to think about prints; about the impression
we leave upon the world and the impact we have. Prints speak also about
memory. They remind us that the impression is not always the same as the
original. And like memory,
every retelling takes on a different character; a different reality.
Prints remind us of our importance in the world, of the many different and multifaceted truths, and of the relative
changeability of it all.
No comments:
Post a Comment
After you submit your comment, it will be sent for approval, which may take up to a day or two. After it's approved, it will appear on the site. Thank you for your thoughts!