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



More Woodblock

I played around with colour today. I rolled out some yellow and red ink and blended them. I then rolled out my separate blocks and combined the image. I really like these. I think they work really well and you get the feeling of intense heat:

Woodblock

A new project! This is a relief print project regarding storytelling. We were to pick a story relevant to ourselves and put this into a single image.

I went with the story of what happened one night after work. I was staying in a 4th floor flat in Limerick with my flatmates. We had some wine and didn't finish the bottle and decided to cork it. Anyway - we went to bed and the next thing I knew was I woke up with one of my flatmates banging on the door and shouting. The flat was on fire. The t.v. had gone up in flames. My flatmate woke up when the wine bottle exploded from the heat. We used the fire extinguishers from the flat and downstairs flat too. Once the fire was out I noticed on the shelf beside the t.v. was a can of Zippo lighter fluid. Thankfully the fire was out before it reached it!!

So, I went and worked on an image for this story. The main elements were the t.v., the wine bottle, lighter fluid and flames.

Here are images of final prints:

Update on more collagraph

This is a mix of cut up prints. I really like the effect.

Here I worked on the three main colours and my blood's reaction to eating chocolate. Sugar levels soar, then drop, then balance out once I eat something healthy. You can't really see the textures well on these images, but the collagraph board had tile adhesive on it and I crumpled some tin foil and dabbed it on. This was in relation to the red, high levels where they were spikey and rough. The lower part of the board had tissue paper glued on - orange area for low levels. The tissue was put on drooping on the board. Across the centre of the board I put ribbon on. This was showing a smooth baseline. I then used woodglue for the 'lifeline'. I really love how they turned out!

With an extra shade of green

Here I just tried it out on white card just to see the actual texture.

More Collagraph

Next I wanted to play with the colours that were relevant to my theme. I rolled out green, orange & red and put them onto acetate to do a monoprint first.

I then cut out some dry point images and inked them up. I then put them on top of the monoprint. To try and bring it together as a collagraph I then blocked off sections (red & orange) and printed the pineapple plate on top. I don't think the dry point parts worked at all, so I stopped with them.

Next I just worked with the monoprint and the collagraphs.

Spaghetti on green

 

Now I am working on the blending of colours to show the gradual change and fluctuation. Will update once I have something to show.

Collagraph

Next we tried collagraph. This is basically building a collage image on a board and printing it. Making the boards was great fun. Colours needed to be relevant too. The colours I used were green (healthy, balanced levels), red (high levels), orange (low levels).

I first created a board - a pineapple with a grid. The grid is to represent the structure and organisation that has to go behind making sure the right foods are prepared etc. (sorry for sounding boring about it - just need to explain my rationale).

This board was made out of paper, pva glue, masking tape, wood glue carborundum, tile adhesive and french polish to seal it:

Here are some images that I printed:

While rolling up, the impression of the pineapple stayed in the ink on the roller. I rolled this out and this is what came out - I like it.

Next I made a plate of a strawberry. I used a paper doiley, tissue paper and acrylic paint, sealed then with french polish:

I didn't really like how the strawberry ones came out, but glad I tried them anyway to see how the textures looked.

Then I cut up some boards and put some different textures on them - tile adhesive, wood glue, carborundum, tissue paper, tin foil and masking tape. I just wanted to play with them just to see how they would print out.

This is to imply spaghetti

The top part has 6 indentations enclosed which is to symbolise the 6 times a day to eat - confinement.

I just played around with reversing the images and seeing what would happen. This was done on thicker paper too.



Print, Print, Print!!!

Woo hoo!!! Finally!! I got into Print!! I'm so excited!! Onwards and upwards!!

Our brief was to work on 'Identity'. I kept going from idea to idea, but eventually decided to work on something that is personal to me, and identifies me. Recently I've discovered I'm hypoglycemic (low blood sugars), which explains a lot to me. When my levels are low I feel lethargic, etc. to ensure I don't let my levels drop I have to eat complex carbs throughout the day - which are basically slow releasing natural sugars. I have to eat regularly and often - 6 times through the day. How bad eh???? To make me feel good, I have to eat!!! Woo Hoo!! Win, win!

Anyway - we started with silkscreen and decided to get an image of myself standing straight (using the 3 tone technique via photoshop. I used bananas to symbolise the complex carbs and used 6 of them to symbolise the amount of times I've to eat. I also placed them mid-way to my body to symbolise that mid-way they are balancing me out. Here are some images:

Here are some images of how the prints turned out:

I love the detail on the boots! This is my favourite part.

Towards the end of printing these prints I played around with placing of the bananas. It's a pity I hadn't tried doing this sooner - I enjoyed doing these:

Next I wanted to do a print with chocolate and how it makes me feel - my sugars soar, then drop quickly, so feel sluggish afterwards.

I then used an image of myself:

Unfortunately I didn't get to the stage to print it on the prints of chocolate, but have a homemade screen that I tried to finish them at home (Easter holidays). It didn't work out as well as it could have using the beds in college, but I was glad to try it out.

I cut out my outline on card and taped it onto the screen.

I tried it on a few different surfaces - chocolate prints, cardboard, chocolate box (Roses), a chocolate wrapper and a newspaper advertisement for a chocolate shop:

I loved silkscreen! I loved the whole process of it and the clarity of the prints. Roll on collagraph next!