Change of approach required

I have now completed the first of the four final prints to complete module One of the five modules together with sketches and drawings and notes but I am far from satisfied with the results.


I started off wanting to do a print of the inside of an old barn but the stencil I cut was too fiddly for this type of basic mono printing. It might work with block printing or screen printing but not mono printing.



What I ended up with was a representation of a tractor in part of a barn which is not quite as spiritually uplifting. Also whilst I did some good experimentation with layering of transparent colours over the top of others to get interesting colour effects the overall colour combination was quite naff! It was well printed for me with good regristration of interlocking shapes and a relatively flat application of colour but it fell short of what I aspired to.



The conclude, there was no subtlety. It strikes me that if you go for subtlety in monoprinting you need to look to the accidental brush marks and textural effects you get from second generation prints.



I realise I need to re think my approach to the remaining three images of this module. I had neatly planned what they were going to be about but now I think I need to create new ideas for images from the textural effects I am getting, in other words working more closely with the medium.

Southbank Printmakers Exhibition

I went to the Southbank Printmakers exhibition yesterday which was in the crypt of St Martins in the Fields off Trafalgar Square and liked the venue and the work. Many of the printmakers who exhibited also had work at the Bankside exhibition I went to recently.



It was a good exhibition with a high standard of work by professional printmakers. The group also run their own gallery on the Southbank near the National Theatre which I must go to at some point.



I think the most useful thing for me is to see how much progress I am making with my printing technique and to be honest I am a long way from being good enough, that said I am still experimenting whilst these printers have already worked out their preferred method of printing and then just improved it over the years.



I also know what sort of prints I like and as I refine my taste it will help me in the artistsic choices I make with my own work.



I recently picked up a copy of Printmaking Today Magazine from The London Graphic Centre which featured an article on the printmaking of Henry Moore who is one of my all time favourite artist/sculptors and I really must buy a book of his prints or go to the forthcoming exhibition of his work or both.



Finding out what the printmaking network is and plugging into it has been quite hard but I am getting a feel for what is going on.



I'm also getting more and more bits and bobs, particularly inks which I try out for various effects. I recently saw a printing demonstration done with black, cyanne, process yellow and process magenta which is the way commercial printers do colour and I've bought these colours with a view to doing the same. Using an extender I make very transparent colours and layer them over each other to get other colours. I really like the transparent effect which reminds me of watercolour.



I have also bought a large tube of Rowney medium which enables me to mix ordinary oil colours and use them as printing inks which is an approach to colour that I am more used to because I can just use my existing oil palette and the paints in my box which I know how to work.



I am on track to finish the first of the five modules by the end of July but the progress I am making is still agonisingly slow, I will have taken seven months. But there is no alternative if I am going to learn the lessons I need to learn to produce degree standard work, I am afterall teaching myself a completely new skill.