Printing

I signed up for a printing course this Spring. I bought a lino print from Holland that inspired me to do my own printing. The course was run at The Artworks lead by Iain Hodgkinson, a member of the Milton Keynes Printmakers. On the course I was introduced to a few different types of printing.

Dry point - scratching into a plastic sheet, rubbing ink into the marks then using a press to get the image on the paper.

Collagraph - Adding any kind of textured material to a heavy piece of cardboard to create an image. Rubbing ink into the plate and using the press to get the image on the paper.

Lino - Cutting into a piece of lino to create a negative image that when inked will be create the positive. To create an embossed effect, soak the paper in water before using the press and create the image. Using hand made paper in a technique called chine colle, to print on combined with the embossing creates a really nice effect.

Woodcut - Similar to lino, cutting into a surface to create the negative and printing the positive. To create the print, use the back of a wooden spoon to press the image on to the paper. This method creates quite bold shapes that can benefit from preparing a background with watercolour or coloured paper then printing on top of the prepared background.

I felt dry point and collagraphs are just a little too time consuming and require a lot of patience for my type of working. The prints that some of the other participants were lovely, you can get very painterly and create a range of tone and shade with both methods.  Lino and woodcuts are much faster and I was able to create a lot of prints in the time of the course, I feel my work is very stylised which suited the lino and woodcut technique.

I stuck to the theme of birds for the course as they have very characteristic shape and lots of texture and I was really happy with what I produced. For the course I used inspiration from a rooster, flamingo, woodpecker, hummingbird and a peacock, my favourite being the hummingbird. All of which were a lino print except the woodpecker where I tried a woodcut.