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A little print from a collaged plate made from old printing plates. Thank you Lucia for the good company and for your advice 🙂. This is attempt no.4, I'll try a few more! (When? No idea 😅)

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Up the maunga. Tried the cuttlebug as a press again. This time removed what I thought would serve as the felt in a press and it came out better but need to be more thorough with inking the plate. I used Japanese bamboo paper.

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Another tetrapak plate for my project... not even inked yet, but I will soon 💥

Thx Bee 🤍 for the company

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With this I decided to stop and call it a day, not because it can't be improved, but because it was midnight and time to go to bed 😄. I don't dislike the colors and the atmosphere in this, though 🙂

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3rd attempt. Tamara's suggestion (adding a pink stripe) was good, but I think I should use darker shades of blue and/or black, otherwise the result is a bit too cutesy (for me at least).

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These monoprints I did earlier, worked the best. I find using a light film of oil paint applied with a palette knife works better than the printing ink

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I like this one but for the last print (bottom right) too much painting has dropped onto the papier. Not a success today but I learned more how to use Tetrapak through our discussion.

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Few prints on the same paper. Was trying to add or retreat some ink on the little square pieces

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Beginning with small paper (with printing ink)

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I used those little square pieces of tetrapak.

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Failed prints and some monoprints

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The plate seemed ok but the print failed so - not sure what was wrong with my various techniques- my little cuttlebug press wasn’t tight enough or paper wasn’t wet enough or when I had hand printed i didn’t press hard enough with the brayer..?

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Multiple plate + chine collé

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Double plate on ecodyed paper

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First I printed the dark background. I used a few torn pieces of paper to mask the white areas (head, collar and hands). Then I removed the paper and traced the drawing. Maybe this is my favourite, but I'm not sure 😅

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Trace monotype.

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Print usig round objects. I like this one. Brown color reminds me of a cave. I usually mix brown and violet, but I will try to use only brown as the background and see, in the future, if kind of hyeroglyphs appear

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This morning I just had time to (start to) make two collagraph plates with tetrapak and sandpaper and foam sheet. One is (an abstraction of) the brain and the other one is the sphenoid bone, the horizontal bone inside the skull on top of which my brain tumour grows....

It is my intention to make a (long) series of works about/around my brain tumour. This might be some sort of a start: and I am planning to try and print them one on top of the other so as to create semi-transparent layers in the print ( if I can 😳)

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monoprints of objects on my desk, using up the ink…

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I was using this torn drawing to mask the edges of my print- it turned out to be the best thing I made..

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I think I learnt a lot, anyway

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...just playing, but a lot of fun!

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This ghost print on an old failed rabbit print...

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I went for monoprinting today and for layering drawings and inkings one on top of the previous one and so on...

this is the last print I made and I like it for the ancient fresco-like texture I somehow (in a very messy way) achieved!

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This was my favourite for the afternoon. Using a ceramic tile for a printing plate. Not using the press.

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A wonderful afternoon of printing and friendship with artists Lucia, Johanne, and Carol.

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Started stitching... such slow work... not used to such a different pace from drawing, but very enjoyable nevertheless

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Acetate plate, printed on Fabriano Unica. Made the paper very wet as it is so hot here everything dries out so quickly. It makes me quite happy.

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I feel I got the soft atmospheric quality I was looking for.

I will certainly go on experimenting with this technique for a new series on trees as part of a bigger project of mine

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the paper was probably not damp enough but love its delicacy of marks

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the plate was inked and then the ink subtracted with a rug/a cotton bud/ some diluent

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Plate made with subtractive monotype technique

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Plate made with subtractive monotype technique

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This is the tetrapak plate. Inspired by a very old drawing of mine, which was inspired by this quote from Khalil Gibran: "Those who give you a serpent when you ask for a fish, may have nothing but serpents to give. It is then generosity on their part."

(It was a rather stressful period of my life 😅)

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First I tried etching on acetate. I did the etching the wrong side because I was talking on the phone with my sister and I can't do multitasking.

I did another one but the print was not good and it also got damaged (maybe the acetate was too thin). So I tried again with Tetrapak. I finished at 2 am and decided to call it a day (or a night...).

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...not very good, I am afraid: the watercolour altered the print too heavily

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This was a ghost print right at the end. Quite interesting!

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This is a good likeness of my dog Uno, but I still like number one the best.

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I played all afternoon!

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I quite like it, but ran into dreadful trouble with the ink drying on the plate and not printing at all - the weather is so hot!!! Then had to turn to the proper intaglio ink but even that was drying on the plate. I like the image though so will try again later tonight when it is cooler.

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It always feels so good to work together

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Better result in transferring the marks on paper: smoother paper?

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Not so good transferring of the marks: because of turpentine used on the plate or the roughness of khadi paper?

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She is fantastic. She knows all about any printing technique, from the more traditional ones to all the eco-friendly, kitchen ones ☺️

The first Patreon tier is just around four euros a month and opens up a number of videos and possibilities like a monthly zoom print club ( also today, September 22!)

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on its own with the last of the ink mix

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finished print

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Printed on handmade khadi paper after dampening only the to-be-printed area with a sponge

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So excited about this print that I took a photo right on the press!

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I am planning to print the wolf on the sheep's chest... no idea how the paper will react...

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Wolfing around...

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This is a proper etching by Jo Barry, which I was fortunate enough to inherit from my mother. I am still miles away from the line quality she has. Definitely the red poppies seem to be painted in afterwards, but it looks as though everything else comes off the plate. This is why I still have to try a proper copper plate etch using hard ground!

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Quite nice in places. Mostly not. An interesting morning's experimentation.

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Another plate.

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The plate still gave reasonably good line quality.

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My favourite of the day.

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Didn't clean enough ink off the plate.

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Very easy to scratch the image onto the acetate, used block printing ink which you can wash off with water, so user friendly compared with proper etching ink. Altogether enjoyed this printing process.

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Best print of the day!!!

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I had very dirty hands by this time!

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Back to painting the ink onto the plate where I wanted it. Zero line from the plate.

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Interestingly, the copper sulphate immediately destroyed the line work I had done on the plate with the dremel. Absolutely no line work to be seen. And the places that I put the copper sulphate did not hold any ink. Interesting experiment. Did not work.

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My first attempt after years at biting a plate with acid (copper sulfate) has not been a success

The plate you see has not been able to give any print. Why? I think because I destroyed the biting I obtained on the plate at first (top pic) through a second round of direct biting (bottom pic)that must have flattened the work of the first acid bath.

Or at least this is my idea

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I used rice paper here. I put it between the damp pages of an old book that I had sprayed with water.

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Tetrapak and seaweed. The seaweed printing is not as defined as I would have liked but oh well... I also discovered that damp seaweed is almost indestructible.

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To me a grazing horse is an iconic symbol of peace.

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Tetrapak cutouts and some herb roots.

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Gelli printing with acrylics - also tried printing on one of Sarah’s handmade papers but didn’t work so well. Smooth paper works best. Lovely to see you all again. It’s been a while!

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The source of inspiration: Kilmainham Gaol (Dublin)

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Another one from our session with Lucia.

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A little experiment with my teeny tiny press.

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Bones...my most successful I feel but I def need working again in these plates

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Experiment n2

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Experimenting with more than one tetrapak plate

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My printing studio

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So I have been experimenting with drypoint etching. Using a copper plate, etching the lines using a Dremel tool. The biggest thing I have learnt is that inking the plate is the most important part of the whole exercise. I do love this horse though.

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Part 2 : three prints with ink. First I put ink on plexi. Second I substracted some ink to have white mark spaces. Third I filled with a brush the white spaces with darker ink. Looks like hieroglyphics !

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Part 1b) Print session: round shapes with black ink only

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Part 1a) Print session: round shapes with three ink colors

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Lovely meeting with Lucia and Johanne... music, printing and relaxing...

Playing with textures: tarlatan, aluminium foil, tulle, garlic skin and corrugated cardboard.

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the plate of the last monoprint... always more fascinating than the prints 😅

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the last one but I feel the blue eye is too dark compared to the faded colour of the rest...

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my first and favourite monoprint

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Playing with oil bars on plexiglass -  adding monoprint

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Although I painted rather than printed yesterday, I did continue with experimentations on my "grazing horse" coca-cola tin print last week by myself. I did a further 4 prints and this was the last one I did and this is my favourite, although my husband prefers the earlier one I published here. My findings were that you have to use the best quality paper possible, and proper etching ink as opposed to block printing ink, works by far the best! I still hanker after the etching printing type, rather than the other printing types, and I think in the Christmas holidays I will have a proper go at real etching once again.

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From the second, simpler plate... still not so bad, I feel

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Collagraph is FUN: when you like experimenting, throwing in a little piece of kitchen sponge, a few seeds, some tape some worker left behind after doing some repairs on cardboard and a plastic sheet, and after inking getting  something like these prints, well... joyful excitement at its best!

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I was feeling a bit lost at the beginning with this one because I wasn't so creative lately. But I like it anyway (reminds me of a land) !

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I titled it: L'Univers (The Universe) but it could have also be 'I'm thinking of Picasso' (ha, ha)