Headlines & Stories

 

 

Back to college!! The brief we got is about Headlines & Stories - depicting what interests me personally in the news. After brainstorming and sieving through many ideas, I went with the theme of theft and crime. Generally, since the recession, crime rate has risen and thieves are becoming more brave and cheeky!! Nothing seems to be sacred at all anymore.These thieves don't seem to consider the fact that people are struggling and working really hard to try and pay bills. These criminals have an air of entitlement and believe that there is nothing wrong with taking what is not theirs. As the saying goes - they would nearly rob the eye out of your head!!!

 

That's where I came up with the idea of a print. I thought of a handful of eyeballs to represent the multitude of thefts from various people. This is the image I went with. Because I was working with etching I had to work out how to etch the tonal qualities on the plate. Here are the various backgrounds I played with:

 

 

 

I ended up going with the first one. After preparing my plate with hard ground on the front (to scratch my image onto) and bitumen on the back to prevent the back of the plate during etching, I then scratched out my image.

 

 

I then starting the etching process by attaching a strip of brown tape to the back of the plate and a piece of stick at the end (this would allow me to dip the plate in and out of the acid without touching the plate itself). I dipped it in the acid for 5 minutes, then washed and dried it. I blocked out areas of the plate where I wanted the lines to be light (painted on bitumen). I dipped the plate again for a further 10 minutes and repeated the process. I continued this until the plate had been dipped for 40 minutes in total. This gave me different variations of tonal lines. This is what the plate looked like after etching:

 

 

 Next I started printing!!! Here are a few examples of how my prints came out:

 

This is printed with a very deep red. I liked how it came out

 

I printed this in black ink, but painted with watercolours in the background. I think this works really well. The hands with eyes really stands out.

 

With this one I used a piece of acetate and etched out the iris' of the eyes and inked them in various colours and printed it on top of the print

Here I cut out the iris' and placed various coloured pieces of transparency celophene. This was lit from behind and doesn't show the colours very well - sorry!

 

Here I played with the form known as chine colle - a process combining pieces of paper to the image with spray glue. The various pieces of paper I used were stories from the newspapers about theft. I also used a little tissue paper too. This particular process didn't work well with my theme here as it took away from the actual image I had created, but I'm glad I tried it. Hopefully I'll try it again on another project.

 

This final image I put up is one of my favourites. I inked up the plate with red ink, mixed some blue with transparency and rolled up the plate. I then put it through the press. I think it works as the image seems to stand out from the background
 

 The main artist I looked at for style of image is Philip Guston. I love his almost cartoon like images. Here are a few examples of his work:

 

Here is also a youtube piece on Philip Guston if you're interested. I really love his work.

 

Philip Guston - Short Documentary

 

 

There's also a Limerick artist that reminds me of Philip Guston's work. He's Mike Culliney and I think his work is brilliant! Here are a couple of images that I love and I've also attached a link to his blog if you want to check him out:

 

 

Here is the link to his blog. He's well worth checking out!!! Mike Culliney's Blog