Hi everyone, Dounia here. We're already in September and it is time for a new topic and a new theme! To cover this end of year, we though we would be nice with our amazing bloggers and give them a very open theme: NATURE! Something we often notice most in Spring and Autumn as the seasons offer new growth and warmth or stunning autumnal colours as the season cools off.
It is all about natural resources and treasures: shapely leaves,
delicate flowers, bold berries… They can be the topic or main imagery of a project but we also urge you to think outside the box. Let's use actual natural materials! And not just as embellishments: Cork, bark, rocks or shells can be great
substrates. You can weave straw, cut up leaves or use sand and gems for
texture. Unusual stalks and seeds can be one of a kind marking tools. Hand
gathered materials like ochres or rust can also be made into great colorants! Here is the word cloud we gave the team to try and spark their inspiration!
Now, the next topic of the year is (Gel) Printing. Let's take a look back at various printing methods that have been around and evolved over the years. Printing is generally described as a process for reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The numerous possible techniques are often differentiate by the type of master used (Diagram by Kathryn Tindall):
We will leave stencilling aside for this topic as it has already been covered several times here on the PaperArtsy blog, in 2015 Topic #12: Stencils and in 2022 Topic #6: Mainly stencils. But we will explore the other three, and you might discover you have actually already practised all of them!
In relief printing, matter is cut off from the printing surface, then the remaining parts are inked and transferred to paper (or another final substrate): the parts in relief are printed. This is globally considered the oldest technique of ink printing.
The master form can be made of numerous materials, often giving different results. This includes stone rubbing or printing, woodblock printing, lino cuts, movable type printing (including Gutenberg printing press) and off course, stamping! So I assume you have tried relief printing.... For an even more personal approach, check our 2019 Topic #16: Stamp carving here on the blog.
For relief printing, you need 2 things: a printing master, or plate, in relief, and a way to transfer those reliefs onto paper or any substrate you are using. Variations in this two steps creates many styles and results.
A great way to get started is to use objects with pre-existing 3D texture as your plate. They are all around us! To reveal these textures, an easy technique is rubbing: just place you paper, or other thin rigid substrate, on the texture and lightly rub it with a crayon on pencil. The raised parts will catch the colour more than the depressions, giving a print! You can also do it with wax from a candle to create a resist.
An advantage is that the images are not reversed so text can be read! Once you have a whole collection of textures, you can assemble them to create complex rubbing, as in this Advance Texture Rubbings video by Ms. Pomranky's Art Room.
An alternative to crayons is to reveal those texture with a brayer/roller loaded with a thin layer of ink or paint. You can see this technique in action in Roller Prints by the Curious Printmaker:
Then it might be time to create your own textured plates for rubbing. Here is an original way by the Curious print maker, using Gesso and careful fussy cutting:
A more traditional way to relief print is to ink the relief of your plate and then place the paper on it to transfer the design. The image will be reversed. You can still build your plate using existing texture: welcome to the wonderful world of relief collagraph!
If you are interested, here is a quick photo tutorial by ArtWay, as well as video Found Textures Collagraph Printmaking by the Bronx Museum Education. For a more involved project mixing in personal designs, check this Relief Collagraph Demo by Sarah Whorf.
Building and preserving plates with fragile of flexible materials like leaves or net can be difficult. Here is a great trick by the Curious Printmaker: using aluminium tape!
You can see the leaves, the plate and two prints form this plate. The first is a relief print, but from the same plate you can get a different look in Intaglio:
This is the reverse of relief printing: matter is still cut off the plate but the ink is pushed into the grooves and wiped off the relief before printing on damp paper with strong pressure: what you cut is what you print. This was the main way to print illustrations from the 1550's to the 1850's. Traditionally, the plates would be metal, generally copper but also zinc or other metals, soft enough to be incised but hard enough to resist the pressure of the press.
Small Intaglio press (end of 19th century)
Many techniques exist, with two main categories. 'Dry' techniques involve directly incising the plate with tolls (dry point, burin) while for 'acid' techniques, the gouges are created by a chemical reaction with a strong acid (etching, aquatint).
Nowadays, traditional intaglio is mainly reserved for bank notes, some postage or official stamps and fine art prints. New, cheaper and easier to work materials are used as plates, like plexiglass, rhenalon or mat board. Those can in some cases be printed without a press! You can see an example in this video of Mat Board Intaglio Print without a Press by Belinda Del Pesco.
However, you might be surprised to learn you might have an intaglio press at home. Big shots and most other die cutting machines indeed work the same way, applying pressure between two rolling cylinders, although on a much smaller scale! They are being used to print intaglio. Quite a few artists are also experimenting with upcycled plate made from Tetrapak and other packaging materials like in Tetrapak Intaglio Prints by Sestini Art and Crafts. So there is no reason not to try!
As said before, you can also create collagraph for intaglio printing. Tuscan artist Paolo Boni built intricate intaglio plate out of cut out piece of recycled metal, taking advantage of their existing texture. Inking each piece of your collagraph separately is time consuming but the result is generally worth it.
If you do feel like playing with a metal saw, you can also texture your plate with more approachable objects like rope, lace or straw. You need to seal your texture plate plate with several layer of binder, glue or shellac but then all materials are fair play! Here is a quick tutorial by Joan Vida on Zart Art:
You can of course mix found textures with your own marks and drawings for a complex look. Also plates do not have to be rectangles! Be sure to check this Classic Intaglio Collagraph Demonstration by Bristol Print Room.
Now, nothing forces you to use colour at all! You can absolutely print a clean texture plate. This is called bling printing or blind embossing. It necessitate pressure to get a good impression, and it works better on damp paper. So, even if no ink is used, it is considered an intaglio technique because it is printed like intaglio, and not relief.
Rings a bell? All techniques touched on before work for blind embossing, as well as many more. I particularly like using Hot Glue for Blind Embossing, cheap, versatile, and personal! Of course, nothing stops you for mixing and matching the different techniques:
The third main type of printing is planographic printing, where the plate is flat: the inked parts and blank part are on the same plane. The main forms of planographic printing are lithography and its modern cousin, off-set printing. Both use the fact that oil and water do not mix: the chosen blank spaces are treated to be water-attractive then covered in a thin film of water. When the oil-based ink is rolled on top, it only stays in the water-free parts. The lot is then transferred onto paper (or fabric, or plastic etc). As there is no relief on the plate that could be broken or squished, those historically are high volume printing techniques.
For a more personal practice of planographic printing, let's explore the possibilities of monoprinting and monotyping.
For a long time, monoprinting and monotyping were used quite interchangeably but lately a push is being made to clarify to the distinction. Monoprinting involves using a matrix with a design in your favoured technique (relief or intaglio) and adding elements to it that are unique to each print like free inking, painted elements or collaged pieces. You create a series of related but non identical prints
A monotype uses a 'empty' plate so each print is completely unique, with no repeated element. As it is not incorporating techniques form relief or intaglio techniques, monotype is not constrained to their traditional materials and opens wide the possibilities!
You can get started by raiding your kitchen and repurposing everyday objects for your monotyping substrate. For example, let's recycle by making plates out of plastic bags with this tutorial on Plastic Bag Printmaking by Alisa Burke.
Also cheap and already in our cabinets, an alterative is Monoprinting with a aluminium foil plate by the Kitchen Table Classroom:
Foil monotype by Orange Easel
To take it a step further, check this great technique inspired by Rosane Viegas in Cloth Paper Scissors using Tetrapak:
To complete your set of kitchen supplies, you can also try Printing from Cling Film by the Curious Printmaker. The cling film is not really a plate, more of a transfer tool but I think it counts!
If that yoga mat from your last health kick if making you feel guilty, why not repurpose it? Making art is good for you ! The results are actually quite detailed, you can find many examples in Yoga Mat Printing by the Curious Printmaker.
Finally for more inspiration and eye-candy, check 2016 Topic #9: Monoprinting here on the PaperArtsy Blog.
Of course, a planographic technique of monotyping that has taken the craft community by storm is gel printing. Versatile, personal and addictive, gel printing popularity has been greatly helped by the development of commercial, permanent gel plates. If you still hesitate, you can still make your own! There are many recipes online, and even recipes comparisons! I made mine using a recipe with glycerine and sugar to make it permanent. It is doing great 6 years later! I can't find the original recipe but it is quite close to this one by Calligraphy cards.
So much inspiration is available online for gel printing, from techniques to tutorials to beginner guides. I will just give you the blogs of the 2 main gel plate manufacturers: Gelli Arts and Gel Press, and present a few specific technique I find particularly interesting. This is terribly subjective I'm afraid!
This is possibly not new to you but image transfer on a gel plate always impresses me! These incredible examples are by Birgit Koopsen. You can learn all here tricks in this Resist Printing (or Image Transfer) on Gel Plate article.
One advantage of the gel plate is how well it works with other art and crafts supplies, be it paint, ink, pastels etc but also stencils! Layers and stencils are a match made in heaven. Get a taste of it in this article by Carolyn Dube.
Finally, to link with the previous sections, if you want to try collagraphs but do not feel up to intaglio, do not fear, you can use them on a gel plate! For a concrete example, check this great example of Collagraph on gel plate video tutorial by Gabrielle. It's a cute owl!
Finally, in this section, I want to touch on some other monotyping techniques. We are getting further and further away from traditional printing. I am not sure it even counts as printing as per the definition at the top of this post! But here at PaperArtsy we are all about experimentation, mixed media and learning, so we are not going to let a definition stop us from exploring other monotyping media!
First are Floating Chalk Prints by Cassies Stephens. Look at these colours! the chalk are dispersed on top of water to be picked up by the paper, quite of like water marbling but with chalk.
Speaking of marbling, I could not pass over a nox classic: shaving foam. We even had a whole topic on it here on the PaperArtsy blog in 2019 Topic #18: Shaving foam.
Finally, here a fun activity: bubble printing. I love the textures created and it is very accessible and easy. Let this video Learn how to Bubble print video by Creativebug Studios guide you!
So here are quite a few ideas ad resources to get you printing! I hope you enjoyed this exploration and come back to check the amazing printing project from our blogging team!
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