Jesse led a workshop in drypoint printing today, a technique which I have previously explored in my A-levels using Perspex. I was sceptical about the workshop purely because I hated drypoint last time I tried it, it was frustrating as I couldn’t get the results that I wanted. But this time I was relieved to be using a new material; aluminium is far easier to work with and make marks into. I was also glad for the experimental approach to making the prints, whereas before I was attempting to draw representational people and I found this difficult with this process. The aim of the workshop was to rediscover the basic principles of printmaking, and applying this to an aluminium plate which could ultimately become a visual representation of us and our artistic practice. I found the concept of creating something to represent myself without being in any way ‘identifiable’ difficult; so I avoided all geometric shapes and worked initially with making different textures and working with single strong lines. We were encouraged to use only black and another colour, for this workshop orange was selected. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the idea of using such a bright colour but I did find that the colour did in fact work very well alongside the black, especially when the two were both used as a richer pigment. I used the black ink to create the intaglio part of the print, and I used the vivid orange on a roller to add a gradient to the top and bottom of the image; providing an isolated viewpoint of the black and white texture. When looking at the prints I am somewhat reminded of a landscape, yet at the same time there is something quite raw or primal about the marks. I embraced the possibility of mistakes and allowed them to influence the prints.
I am pleasantly surprised at how these prints turned out, and I would like to look into this printing process in more detail and be able to develop the technique, referring back to my own subject matter.
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AuthorThird Year BA Hons Fine Art student studying at Falmouth University Archives
April 2017
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