It was great to get back to the studio and have another look at yesterday's prints. I decided that the marks needed strengthening so put that on the to-do list.
Chris started off by talking about the history of lithography (discovered in 1796, Bavaria). He then showed us all sorts of different effects that will be possible. The plates we are making are light-sensitive therefore we were given a plastic sheet to draw on with a rough side to hold the materials. It needed time to dry so we needed to work on this straight away so that it would be ready to expose and process.
I tried a little tusche but the diluted Indian ink was my favourite and I decided to just use that. This was the plate:
We used a special light box to expose the plate and then chemicals to develop the image. My processed plate looked like this:
I was really pleased with the marks, they seem very organic and suit the forest. The print looks like this:
The only thing that's rather annoying is the the perspex plate is a different size to the litho plate so I can't use the litho marks at the edges as I planned so I need a new idea there.
I can't wait to print the litho marks with the engraving marks. I want to see whether I can get marks like this on a poly plate, otherwise I'm hoping that the lithino might be able to recreate them.
Finally I proofed the engraving plate again as I had made lots of new marks on it, I also added some monoprint to see how I might incorporate the band of trees.
The mono print works well, I think I will use this technique for the 'final' image. I will need to create a mask so the I can ink right ups to the log piles on either side. I need to scratch lots of really dark marks between the round log pile shapes. They also need to 'sit' on something as they're rather floaty and weird at the moment.
It's really nice being back in a studio with other printmakers, although there are the typical problems of queueing for the presses and having to pause and look at random picture of peoples dogs/grandchildren/etc. I've been invited to do and try out stone lithography in Diss with Paul (the guy who knows Jonathan from Camberwell). He seems incredibly generous and it's really interesting watching him as he obviously knows what he's doing but is keen to learn from Chris. He's very interesting and I'd like to stay in touch with him.