Blog 16/9/15 and 17/9/15 -VISITING LCB EXHIBITION SPACE

Met with Katharine, Serena and Nina - we have decided to hold an exhibition of our lithography work so far charting our progress - opening November 11th - December 23rd at the LCB depot in Leicester. So that's exciting ! Slightly worried re the lack of work that I've got to display compared to my fellow fellow Nina but  I'm sure it will be fine! We visited the exhibition space on the way back to the station - its superb - not too big and really light.


                                                                     Gallery space at LCB

Blog 22/9/15 and 23/9/2015

After seeing the space Nina started to work on a stone to make a poster to advertise the event

The stone was left to rest overnight and the next day we printed it up

I also prepared 2  photo litho plates for my park hill stone as a means of adding colour to the prints- sky, concrete balustrades and windows were traced from one of the prints that I had already taken onto 2 large sheets of draughting paper using black marker pen and acrylic paint. In the dark room the draughting paper was attached to 2 separate photolithography plates using scotch tape - they were then transferred to the photoexposure machine and exposed for 12 units. The exposed plates were then taken back to the dark room,  the draughting sheets were removed and the plates dampened with developing solution for 3 minutes until the image started to appear. The plates were then washed with water and dried . Gum Arabic solution was then placed thinly on each plate and then dried with a hair dryer. Each plate was then protected with a layer of tissue paper so that they wouldn't get scratched.
Here are the plates - unfortunately there wasnt enough time to print from them so thats for another time (in about 6 weeks!) as Leicester Print Workshop is moving premises and will be until November 4th. 

Photo litho plates produced  (which can be inked as a monoprint to add colour tints to existing prints - top one will add colour the concrete balustrade areas, the bottom one will add colour in areas of the windows and sky (images reversed but will be the right way round when printed)

26th August 2015

MORE CHINE COLLE ADDITIONS USING MARBLED AND AEROSOL SPRAY PAINTED PAPER

I carried on cutting out more marbled paper shapes and pulled more prints. I used a combination of 50% crayon black : 50% noir a monter with a dash of crimson red and the nap roller .
The stone was becoming quite dark in places so I selectively pumiced and etched the really dark areas with atzol solution and then applied French chalk and gum arabic

When I compared the prints that were printed with noir a monter ink alone with that of the combination of inks (crayon black and noir a monter) the noir a monter alone produced a softer lighter print - the combo was really good for dense velvety blacks - Discussed this with Serena -a possibility for the next stone might be to use an image that takes advantage of both soft and dense hues of each of the inks and use 2 stones to print on to gain the advantages of both.

When I got home I aerosol spray painted some blank sheets of paper in various colours (buff pink/ sand/ terracotta) with the idea of using these as chine colle instead of the marbled paper.
These were also printed as before.


27th August 2015/ 2nd September 2015 - MAKING GUM ARABIC TRANSFER PAPER
 
Serena also showed us how to make gum Arabic paper to use for transferring textures and drawings to stones .A sheet of cartridge paper was gently blotted with a damp sponge and placed on a board. Watercolour adhesive strip tape was cut to seal the paper to the board. Once the paper had dried a diluted solution of gum Arabic was brushed evenly on to the paper - care being taken not to incorporate brush marks or stray bristles from the brush. This was left to dry and another thin coat applied.

                    
                      Gummed cartridge paper stretched and covered with gum arabic solution to make transfer paper

We were interested in adding texture to the transfer paper so the paper was divided into four and different additives dissolved into the gum arabic to give texture.
A teaspoon of pumice powder was added to one batch of the gum Arabic solution, a teaspoon of carborundum grit was added to another and a teaspoon of whiting to another. These 3 solutions were each painted onto a quarter of the prepared paper. One quarter of the board was left with just plain gum arabic solution on it.

Blog 3/9
Carried on taking more prints with chine colle  but this time tried a different paper (heritage white) - nice paper -Used more crayon black in the combined ink mix which gave a really dense black print which I liked - also noticed a few extraneous blobs appearing on the prints - Serena reckoned these were due to bits of leather off the handles of the nap roller being incorporated on the stone and printing - need to watch that ...

Next time -? Mono print using paper prepared a few weeks ago or photolitho plate?

20/8/15 -CHINE COLLE WITH MARBLED PAPER

Whilst on holiday in Cornwall I came across some beautiful hand marbled pink and grey paper in a second hand book shop. I thought this woud be interesting to use as chine colle as the colours reminded me of the brick work of Park Hill. (Chine colle is a printmaking technique whereby paper of a different colour or texture is adhered to the overall piece. It usually involves sticking precut shapes of paper to the heavier support paper in the printing process.)  I cut squares of the marbled paper to fit the bricked up areas of the print using carbon paper on one of my earlier prints to trace the shapes accurately.

The stone was inked - (using just Noir a monter ink and the squares of cut marbled paper were placed image side down on the stone and pritt stick glue placed on the non image side of the marbled paper-(see below)

A dampened sheet of watercolour paper was carefully placed on top of the glued cut shapes and then the stone run was through the litho press - Heres the print! (I also added some blue and gold marbled paper on the left hand side of the print)

 It seemed to worked quite well and I thought I would try this again next week but using a different ink combination As the noir a monter alone didnt give the lovely velvety black that I got when I added crayon black ink to the mix,

Serena also showed me another way of adding colour to the prints. A large piece of cartridge paper was coated thinly with water based varnish on both sides - care being taken not to incorporate brush strokes. Small squares were then cut up as in the chine colle cut outs above and then inked and then placed ink side up on paper to accept the print.

I didn't have time to try this method out but will have a go another time!