Longing……For……For……For……

Experimenting Vase Print Outcome and Artist Research

As part of my process for making Chinese style stencils to use for printing, I decided to do a little research in artists that have done similar methods and styles in printing or painting. I looked at an Artist called Patrick Caufield because he is widely famous for his colourful selection of vases and has given me good ideas towards my ongoing printing process. Although his vase prints are quite bold looking and plain they still have that edge to them making them look almost real but not. I wanted to use more advanced methods in printing to make my vase prints look more real than Patrick Caufield’s vases and I did successfully in my eyes. Another artist I looked at was Bridget Riley for her white, black and colourful straight lines.

As she is a painter and not a printer, I wanted to use similar ideas towards making some nice patterns within my next series of vase prints. I wanted to try and produce a meaning where you see objects through Skype that look real but really they not because all you see is pixels and lines of colours. I wanted to express this meaning in some of my vase prints as I was already working on my vases at the time and thought it would be a different and great idea for me to try accomplish. The next artist I decided to look for was called Romero Britto because he also works on patterns but what’s more, he also paints vases and uses these colourful patterns within his vases.

I thought that this was very good research towards my ongoing process of my printing skills and I want to try continue to perfect my vase prints. After doing research on these three artists, I decided to do some careful planning on Photoshop to see what the outcome of my vase prints look like if I were to print through the vase stencils. I tried the normal Chinese traditional colour of red to make my vase print on Photoshop and I zoomed in to try fill in all the gaps of the vase patterns in red colour. After I had done all this, I then filled in the black part of the pattern in White colour and the result of this experiment made me quite confident to do some vase printing. This is what the result would look like if I printed it and shown above is my real finished vase print that I printed through the roller press.

The pattern Vase is also shown above to show my finished outcome and to compare my ideas from these three artists. I will keep trying to produce more ideas in making more patterns for my vases and also trying to make my vases look more realistic. In relation to indexical traces, these vases present something that I have seen in real life whilst on my travels in China and also through Skyping. These are like a memory trace that I see inside my mind and I always have the desire for owning vase quantities of nice vases but cannot afford them or take them all back to the UK. So I basically try to produce affordable vases by printing them and make them look more real with some interesting patterns on them.

My Perspective and Process of These Vase Prints.

I wanted to try something new with one of the first stencil vases that I cut out  and I wanted to use the inner area of the vase shape and then I could print the background behind it. Once I printed the background around the inner area of the vase shape I then make the outer area stencil of the vase shape so that I can print inside the inner area to make the print of the vase. After I have finished cutting these shapes out I then have to roll out the different colours of ink very carefully using a very thin roller of my own and a steady hand to make the straight lines of the different colours.

Using the thin roller, I roll the colours as straight as I can onto thin plastic sheet which works very well towards the cleanest effect and accuracy. Once all the different colours are finally rolled out in straight lines, I then apply the inked plastic sheet onto the inner area of the vase stencil and use the roller press to print the background. Once this stage is printed and dried, I then do the same for the inner vase area but this time I roll out the different colour lines the other way so that the lines for the vase and the background are different to each other.

Once this is done I cut a bit more rim of the inner shape of the vase to print the outline of the vase in black so that the vase stands out more and looks bolder. After this you then get the end result of the vases which are shown above and to me have turned out rather well considering I don’t have to do over thirty or forty processes to get all these colours. Also doing it this way is more certain for the colours of my print to be more accurate and a better quality of printing.

A trace of the objects through skyping?

The whole idea of doing these types of vases to the other vases stencils I done is that I want to express the objects we really see through Skype or video. All we see is just different colours because the computer uses so many different colours to make up the objects we see through camera and you normally get invisible flickering of light and colours that the eye picks up on but our brain cannot see it properly.

I wanted to express this with the vases because at the time this idea just came into my mind of how we see objects through the camera and decided to use it on a vase. May continue to do more of these type of vases later.

Story of Finding My Vase Stencil Prints Idea

Whilst on my travels in China, I have visited many different shops around old towns and modern cities which are so fascinating to see because I find it always interesting to see many different things that I have not seen before. In Shanghai and Huang Zhou I walked around many different shops which were very inspiring and I saw Things like old looking wooden furnishings such as chairs and tables that were quite interesting to see and the way they were carved and the nice dark stained finishes on them.

I also had plenty of opportunity to seeing some solid gold jewellery that were made up into dragons, plates, statues of people and these solid gold ornaments were all nicely carved from gold which were quite expensive to buy looking at the price of them.

How did I get my Inspiration?

What’s more, I was really interested in the quaint and intricate looking vases that they had on show next to the jade carvings. I really thought these were the most interesting because every Vase was like a unique one off manufacture in its own right.

In fact I liked them so much I actually bought one vase that interested me the most that had original white and blue Chinese colours and had cut out patterns and lettering so you could see through the Vase. The top funnel part of the vase lifts up so you could place a candle light inside or something and was really worth buying for my father as he likes vases very much.

In the same shop they also sell the quality ink brushes that you write with but for some reason I just could not take my eye from these nice Vases, they were just so nicely hand painted bits of pottery. So my idea really comes from looking around shops and seeing the intricate works done on some ornaments especially the very fine detailed vases.

Although I could not afford all of them, I had to think of some way of making prints of them so I looked at the Chinese method of cutting out paper stencils. I want to be able to print vases that would be more affordable and can hang up in people’s living rooms or anywhere in their home that would go nicely with their colours.

Paper mayhem….

I began copying some paper stencils shown on the Chinese websites and bought my own proper blue and red colour stencil papers to use to cut out the vases. The only and biggest problem I faced when doing this was that the paper was in fact too thin for the likes of the ink I want to use for printing with and would never work. In the end I waited until I came back home from China last summer and decided to photocopy all the vases that I ever cut out, I think about 8 or 9 of them and I just sent all the copies from the photocopier to my email address.

Once that was done I went back from the library to the printmaking room, opened up my email and simply sent the images to Photoshop, making sure the sizes and quality of DPI are correct then just sent them to the main printer and managed to print them out nicely in Matte finish.

Plan of action!

After that well… the fun begins of cutting them all out again only this time on thicker paper and I just knew that there would be no way that the ink would get through as it’s not too watery anyway just thick water based ink. So once the fun and games were over I just look forward to the printing to be honest and the only method I could think of the most that would work out really well would be my own best printing method called the Screen Press Printing. Yeah silk screen would be too much ink for the stencil to even bare and will just break after a few prints, also using the stamp press would not be an accurate and clear enough print.

How did I make it?

I just basically use the roller press, my plastic screen and my different sized rollers to roll the different colour inks on acting as the quickest and best solution to the problem. I then place the inked plastic screen on top of my vase stencil and then let the magic happen…  I do not even wet the paper or even use the blotting or watercolour paper, I use mount card and normal card papers to print all my vase stencils on and the ink just comes out better than I could ever expected. It even came out quite embossed making it almost come to life and this is exactly the effect I wanted.

A memory trace coming to life?

The whole idea of this exercise was to try producing Vases that look almost real but is not, just fading traces of what people would desire and using Chinese style stencils with English style printing methods and worked out the way I wanted. There you have the two cultural influences bound together as a whole creating the new art themes that I always been trying to produce and I could say that these prints are only the beginnings of my Vase series.

The stencil cut-outs are in fact a big thing in China because it has been a big hobby for hundreds of years and they even use their stencil cut-outs to stick inside their homes or even restaurants as they looked nicely decorative. I want to carry on using these Chinese methods into my own interpretation of printing to create good stencil printing work.

Reflecting back on China Shipping Collaboration, other prints and the Now.

With my collaboration project drawing very near by January 2014, I had to think of at least two or three companies in mind that I can work with that would specialise closely with Chinese culture. These companies that I had in mind were Chinese restaurants, Chinese supermarkets, Chinese university in China or maybe China shipping which was closer to my home and also the biggest company than the other ones mentioned. I thought what would be really great would be to give China Shipping a call because to me they seem a very large company with billions in revenue and so much to offer me as part of my work in my university.

My plan of action!

Before I decided to go on my travels again to china on January 5th I wanted to grab the chance quickly as I had to sort this project out soon before I leave. So I arranged an appointment with Mr Wang to see whether or not he would be willing to discuss what I want to collaborate with him and the company. It was very nerve racking at first having the meeting with one of their managers and we got talking about the work that I get involved with and the prints that I do, I even showed them one of my special scenery prints which I named Chinese Venice.

I would rather gather at that point he seemed quite interested in seeing the prints i done recently so he decided to take this idea more seriously by contacting the general manager Robert Hughes about this collaboration. It may seem a bit intimidating at this point to have the discussion in front of two managers but actually I felt rather calm and also felt to myself I needed to pull something out that was straight forward and professional. I discussed to both of them that if they would be willing to accept my offer in going to china and taking some good photos of some scenery and then let them choose the right one for me to etch and print.

The agreement

We discussed finances after the initial ideas and agreed that he would just pay for the cost of materials first to see how well I done with this new print and he said if I am good enough then he will pay me a higher commision for the next one i do for him, at this point everything was confirmed and i knew what to do and where i was going with this project now. When I was in China I did in fact find some nice old style sceneries with the pagoda tower and old china to take photos of some scenery and let them choose the right one to print with. When I was in China I did in fact find some nice old style sceneries with the pagoda tower and old house roofs but at this time of year, just seemed too misty or foggy to use.

I sent the general manager Robert Hughes the photos and he was not rather convinced these would be clear enough to etch and print so in the end he gave me one of his clear summer photos taken from a tranquil garden in the Forbidden City. This case was solved as the photo looked very detailed and a nice challenge for me to take on, the dry-point etching of the garden had taken me one month to etch out and two weeks to try print a perfect one out. The materials I used for this process was water colour paper as it was easy to absorb the water and hold the ink and the ink I used was the French 88 Black ink which gave it that dark crisp clean finish to it.

After it was dry I then decided to give it some colour as the manager explained previously that he wanted some colour painted on the etching. I used some good quality water colours so that I can blend the colours of the skies and water of the garden easily to make the different warm colours. After about 3 months of making and framing I was ready to present the printed image to the manager so I arranged an appointment to see him one Friday and see what he thought about it.

The final outcome

When he saw the final finished piece he looked by my eyes a bit lost for words and blown away by the amount of detail and work that was involved making it, it seemed he was satisfied enough with the work I produced and given me a little commission towards the cost of materials and time making it. This first ever collaboration has made me more aware of the art world that we live in today and was just such an exciting feeling when you’re working for someone that you don’t know too much and have to produce an art work in good time.

The Now – New Printing Ideas.

This has to be the best experience that I have tasted so far and would be happy to do that again any time with another company that is eager for a new print in their work place. I will carry on producing new prints and other Media of art work to enable myself to be better than the last company I worked for. I will try my best to continue doing these kind of prints because I very much enjoy seeing a lot of Chinese sceneries and I just want to copy these nice scenes by scratching out lots of detail on Drypoint plastic.

Its nice seeing what the result will be when it comes to the printing process and just seeing the magic come out onto water colour paper. But Because of the time this year doing other stuff like Degree show, Website and Blog, I wont be doing any etchings at all this year as my etchings take roughly one month to create but will try to start an etching in the summer time once everything is finished. Right now I will be just doing the interesting stencil prints instead as they take less time but also to me, they are just as intricate looking as the Dry-point etching prints.

Planning for my (Virtual Mah-jong House – Life’s A Long Game)

Here are some drawings that I wanted to add to show my planning and how this helped me for setting up my installation of my Mah-jong and how this helped me for future reference. I added the two artists which proved a much stronger resemblance for the work I am interested in and seeing these artists have given me more projection ideas on how to project cleanly and Appropriately for my Mah-jong piece. Will be working on another projection piece soon and hopefully will prove to be as successful as this installation.