No squeaking for the foreseeable future

My November optimism was misplaced.  The printing is not going as well as I wanted.  This is partly the reason for the blog hiatus as well; no good prints = no news.

Here are a few photos of the prints I made last semester; the first 4 are woodblock on Japanese paper.

mixed media, ink on woodblock with photograph

Inside I'm squeaking II

I went back to this plate on Wednesday when I had barely half an hour to spare and didn't really know what I wanted to do so I inked it up in blocks a la poupee with the colours I had out.  And lo and behold, it worked! 

More experiments along this line next week.

Emilie Doyle

I journeyed through the thronged streets in the icy wind off the Shannon to Limerick Printmakers to see the solo show by Emilie Doyle.

Emilie is the graduate of LSAD who won the busary award from Limerick Printmakers last year and I've always liked her work, partly because we share the same fascination for lines.

Her solo show was great, lots of monoprints and collographs, very simple but striking and quite fresh looking I thought.  Here are some photographs of my favourite prints:-

The Lights, monoprint

The Turquoise Door, collograph

Street, collograph

Wind Farming (detail), collograph

The Yellow Door, collograph

Walking the Land, collograph

I also love the way she has framed some of them on ripped, corrugated cardboard and cheap hardboard.  I am a great fan of arte povera and think that the unpretentious presentation adds to the impact of the print itself.

Etching and aquatint

When I made my first aquatint in 2nd year I wasn't too impressed and wondered what all the fuss was about.  Now however, I'm experimenting around a lot more and can see why it's so popular.  The original plate was really flat until the aquatint went on and I intend to keep working into the plate until it's really messed up.

My first edition

I made my first edition for Limerick Printmakers a couple of weeks ago.

It's a screenprint homage (sic) to Alexa Chung featuring an image I drew of her from Elle magazine together with some of the accompanying text from the article.

I made about 36 prints and needed 25 for the edition.  Just about managed to get 25 good ones which brings home to me the importance of a) good registration and b) careful printing.

They are for a box set called 20:20 which is in collaboration with Hot Bed Press in Salford, Manchester - my home city.  I like that coincedence.

Inside I'm squeaking ...

I started this plate as an experiment after seeing the work of Akiko Taniguchi.  It's been etched to black and then burnished back to give the round shapes which are meant to be silage bales.  I got very excited whilst inking up the plate ...

so decided to try a roll-up and some a la poupee inking.

I'm still messing around with it and will post some images of prints later.  Might use it for our editions project.

It is possibly time

I put some of my work up here instead of other peoples so here are some sketchbook pages:-

I'm focussing on details at the moment with the hope of trying to put these together in a series of etching, drypoints and woodblock print.