A3 prints finished!

   All four layers are finally done! I am so happy with how they turned out. I made 8 so there was room for changing colours and mistakes if some were misprinted, so I ended up making 3 that were a completely different colour palette, and honestly they were my favourite. The original colours were meant to be green, orange, pale yellow and dark brown, but I changed the dark brown to black, and then did some ones with prussian blue.

   The prussian blue ones are nicer because the lines are much less harsh than the black, and it gives a more subtle finish. Then I did a set with pale yellow, pastel pink, bright pink and prussian blue. This colour palette is a lot more lively and illustrative like an image from a book, and these prints were more aligned as well with no misprints. This is probably the one I will put in my exhibition. This is the most ambitious lino print I have done, and I think I pulled it off! 

First layer test print, with just the highlights.

3rd layer test print, adding details like wood grain and a picture frame.

Final prints! The blue shows up much better in person c:

Collograph printing

   I was inspired by a few artists, like Monster Riot, to try collagraph printing, where you build up layers to print rather than take them away like in lino printing. I wanted to print the fisherman from my paper cuts, but I wanted to be able to change the colour of each piece, so I made each part separately. I also printed over collaged grounds, which didn't go well because the print was already so complicated that adding a collaged BG was just overpowering. I think these prints could also be changed into vector drawings on illustrator.

   I'll probably but some of these in my final exhibition, as long as they fit. If I do this again I will need to paint the surface with thicker PVA and more layers, because after a couple of washes they started falling apart, so I was limited with changing colour.

Flowers make it extra aesthetic for instagram

Maria and the Fishermen

I have finished the first vector drawing! It took a while but i'm happy with how it came out. I chose the colours based on the outfit she was currently wearing, but ill probably mess around with the colours at some point later. The hands were the hardest part because they were so fiddly, but I saved them on a separate file so I can reuse them.

I also worked more on my paper cut drawing technique, and made some cute hipster fishermen characters. I used a combination of found papers and printed grounds to collage them, cutting out individual parts to build up the image. I think my problem before with papercut drawings is that I used the rush them, as I would get impatient, but today I took my time and made some decent paper cuts for the first time.

Lino prints

A small selection of 2 colour lino prints

   So far I have done two lino print designs from the A2 ink drawings I did. Getting the flowiness of the ink drawings to translate into lino is very difficult, and instead it gives a more structured, illustrative effect.
   By doing lots of prints I saw that just by changing the colour, the images can have complete opposite moods and interpretations. The orange girl for example looks more happy than the one in grey, which looks a lot more melancholic. Also, the green coffee mug reminds me of a science experiment, with bubbling chemicals, but the yellow one reminds me of sweet honey.

Starting Vector Drawing, and painting characters!

    I started a vector drawing today based on one of the lino prints and cafe drawings I did. I am new to the software so using illustrator is a learning curve, but it is coming along nicely. Hopefully the more I use it the faster I will get, because it is taking a while to complete this piece. The plan is that she will be holding a cup of tea, relating to the mindfulness research that I have done in my project previously, and she will look very relaxed. I want to do more of these, so that I can maybe have a set for my exhibition. The good think about vector drawings is that I can blow them up to any size, making using the digital printer a possibility. I could make them into posters and even frame them!

   Also today I finalised my character designs for my A3 print, so I can get printing that ASAP! It will be 4 colours; Orange, yellow, green and dark brown, inspired by the special ramen we had at Wagamamas! They should pay me for all of this advertisement, or at least give me free ramen...
   I ended up making the lady look more like the Yubaba lady that I drew at the bus stop, because the original just looked weird to me, and she looked kind of severe, like a harsh wife. I want her to be cute and relaxed looking! The end result looks much more like I planned; A nerdy hipster woman who probably has a million cats, and her husband just lets her because if it wasn't cats she was spending her money on, it would be expensive hand printed silk scarves...

composition tests

Today I worked on various compositions that I can use for my final A3 print. I used a lot of methods to do this so I could also experiment with techniques and materials. The first one was a monoprint with emulsion over the top.

  The emulsion kind of ruined it in my opinion, so I took these and photocopied them in black and white to collage them. I really love work that uses this technique but I am not very good at it, though I would like to be, so practice makes perfect!

After I collaged I overlaid the two using bypass printing. I really like how these came out because the overlapping materials created interesting patterns, but the drawings were still visible underneath, without the ugly emulsion smeared all over it. Tried sewing into one of them also, but getting straight lines is impossible! How do fashion students do it?!

   With some more photocopies I also put ink on them, then cut them out to make more collages, overlaying them with patterns made by printing with found packaging. I think the one where there is 4 sat around a desk looks very ominous, like a very serious meeting, or a group of cannibals at a dinner party.. I really like the composition of the other one though, how they aren't on the same level but still opposite. This is probably the one I will use for my A3 lino

Character design

   After doing the print of the man eating noodles I decided I want to make A big A3 print using lino based on this theme, as I really enjoy this printing technique and I have never done anything bigger than A4. I won't just jump in because the characters will not fit together, so character design is important.

    For this design I just took the man's face and basically made him into a woman. This way the characters don't look odd together. However, I don't like this composition, so tomorrow I will work on that to figure out what works best. It might be a bit weird that he is basically having dinner with himself.. that's not very romantic unless he's a narcissist.. but shhh nobody else will know..

Wagamamas

   Whilst at Wagamamas celebrating my 19th birthday I did an observational drawing of my boyfriend eating his ramen, with Nicolas Nemiri in mind who I found on Instagram, as I was using a pentel ink brush pen, and Nemiri works in a loose
way with ink that I admire.

  I experimented with mark making and layers in the prints based on that drawing, like Nemiri does in his work, and I like how the two colour prints came out, with the bold shapes and textures. The third 3 colour print however looks too busy, with too many marks, so if I use more than two colours in the future I'll work more with shapes and less with pattern.

Working Big

observational drawings from cafe Nero

   I wanted to get out of my sketchbook, and work more loosely like we have in previous workshops, and doing this really gave me motivation and ideas to work with. I want to use these paintings to create more refined prints, as they would go well in a series of 3.  The coffee cup image works the best because it is the simplest and the loose drips in black ink contrast well against the bright yellow. If I use colour in my prints I want it to be a bright contrasting colour against black. Translating the looseness of these ink paintings to lino print or collagraph will be difficult though.

A2 studies inspired by observational drawing, experimenting with ink, emulsion and acrylic paint.

Printing on collage

  This time I used sewing just as an accent in the background of my print, that I made out of found materials. I like the texture that the sewn parts create under the print, which is more visible where the ink is darker. It is subtle, but it adds something to make the image more interesting. This way of working isn't my cup of tea though, because printmaking using monoprints is very hit or miss. I'm glad I experimented with it though, as it is a good way to put texture and pattern into a piece.

To cheer myself up after the monoprinting I did a bit of lino printing onto collage. The contrast of this, from the light left side to the dark right side, works well in a composition, but something is missing.. Maybe it is his line from the rod, or fish swimming underneath..

Sewing

  Taking inspiration from Jose Romussi, I sewed over a picture of my boyfriends Grandad Rod using freehand embroidery on a sewing machine. He was very fitting because he was a sea fisherman in his spare time. I like the effect it gives because it adds translucency to the picture, like on his hat, which looks like it could be seethrough. However, I realised that there is such thing as too much, and sewing into the features of his face added a creepier feel that I wasn't going for...

When using this technique in other pieces, it would be best as just a small touch or to emphasise certain areas, because it can be overpowering. However, I would also like to try and sew an entire image on fabric, but maybe hand sewing would be better, as it gives more control.

Wild workshop

Acrylic paint and emulsion with ink over the top 

A1 piece, Ink with emulsion slapped on over the top 

   With Eddie we did a really fun workshop where we circulated around tables every 10 that required us to work with different media on different scales. We worked with collage, making grounds, photomontage, paint and bypass printing. I enjoyed this because it pushed me out of my comfort zone and I made things that I would not have thought of otherwise, so it was great for quickly generating ideas and it helped me accomplish what I set out to do in my last blog post. Working on such a large scale was scary but it was actually much faster than doing a small thing in my sketchbook.
   I really liked the effect that brushing emulsion over the ink gave; it blurred the lines to give a watery look. I also love the texture of acrylic, and I think it would be great for fabrics especially because the brush strokes show movement.
  To expand on this I need to take what worked (the movement and texture) into further experiments, and use these methods to quickly generate ideas throughout the rest of the project. It doesn't matter if everything's not perfect, as long as it gives more ideas that can be worked on later.

Development

     I spent a day developing the mark making processes that I tried out during the workshop, to create more controlled experiments focussed on my topic. I chose to develop the observational drawings of fishermen that I did, because fishing is a very important pastime in my family. I also wanted to add an element of colour, so I chose a palette that my mind instantly relates to fishermen; the bright yellow of their jackets and the reds in their faces from all of that bracing sea air. The first experiment was very detailed, so in the second image I tried to simplify it, but I think I still prefer the first one because although their are more lines, the simple colours break it up into shapes.

   After this I will use different media that I do not normally to draw with and make marks, to push me outside of my comfort zone, because Ink has become my go to media lately.