Print process - First final - Underwater

It was strange when starting my first final print, been out of the print room a week and i almost felt as if i had forgotten everything! - even in writing things down it can be difficult remembering how the process actually works. It took me a little while to get back into the flow of things.

- first things first, i tested my lino cut to see if everything was neatly how i wanted it to be. - after making some tweaks i started on the producing the mono printed backgrounds.

- After discussing with the technician,  i am approaching these prints with a slightly different technique to my last experiments - to stop the print going onto the whole piece of paper - cut the board to the exact size of the lino.
- using coda trace to line up the paper and board.
- rolling up board
- using stencils to block out ink - creating a darker sky when paper printed on top.

- stage one - create loads of backgrounds. - long process. relief the ink 4/5 times until i have achieved a light enough background.
- stage 2 - water - reliefs - on top.
- my first print was quite successful but i wanted to crate more depth - felt a little flat.
this is where the process gets complicated.
I wanted to create the effect that - the face was lighter grey than sky, the water was blue, but inside of hair =lighter blue than water.
- so may not sound complicated but had to think carefully how i would create this as a process. - is it possible? is there too mud risk of it being unpredictable that way? need to consider if its worth this.
- different methods were;
I used my stencils and played around with layering and relieving over different pressures of ink
- if too light - i would change the pressure by adding more packing.
- one way i tried was to go from dark to light - so create the darker sky first around the stencil but i soon realised that this wasn't going to work. - i would be unable to get the gradient of textures in the background. - inking board, stencils protect surface - aiming to go darer with the sky then to light. realised that this would be really difficult should be light to dark.


When i finally figure out the right method and order of printing, i put the stencils on the wrong way round! meaning if i put them the right way the ink would go onto the clean card! I had to cut them out again.
finally the right process is underway, - little did i know at the time.
so after i got my new stencils i thought i was doing the right thing by;
- creating my light relief of textured back ground.
- inking up the board again, and relieving only twice by hand with tissue paper, and twice on the machine with slightly less pressure. -
- placing on top the board my stencil for the face and hair and wave stencil - being careful to line this up correctly.
- positioning onto the paper - with the background already printed. - again the alignment is really important, but very difficult. - however i became quite good at doing this! and managed to be neat a lot of the time!
- when taken off the board leaves a darker silhouette around the face.

- Adding colour.
- after previously testing the colour by inking up the board i found a much easier way - rolling up the paper. - this saved a lot of time, and also meant you could be more careful lining up.
- i relieved the paper - pressed twice by hand then once through the machine. - as i found the pressed blue one was too strong.
- place the inked up blue paper onto the paper -BUT - with the hair stencil underneath. once this is printed repeat the process but remove the stencil - creating this beautiful two tone!

- nervous adding the black lino but i managed to line it up fairly well. love the use of colour! the black really makes it pop!
I am so much happier with this result.!!
- at this point in the day i have been printing for hours. the print room is closing and i am exhausted. I hope that now i understand and know how to achieve this look i can come back tomorrow and it be much more productive!

- when once things going wrong like this in mono print, you have to start the whole process again - its actually more time-consuming than i previously thought, but now I've experienced it first hand, i understand!

- after a lot of experimenting, and trial and error, i finally figured out how i was going to approach my final design. Although there has been a lot of frustrations throughout the day, i finally felt like i was getting somewhere. it was that critical moment where something seemed to twig, and i understood a lot more about how i was going to make this work.

- I knew that this process would take some time - and although i have experienced previously, each print is unique and therefore needs to be handled uniquely. - so i didn't expect to have a perfect print in one day. i was exhausted but now excited to try and produce more tomorrow!

Now i had achieved it once the processed seemed like it would be fine. Today has been much more successful! i was able to produce a large quantity and so had lots of spares for the ones that went wrong. i have left today with at least 5 good prints.
- feeling much more positive about continuing the process with the next two!