What has happened within the process?
well… reflecting back from the last post I made about my prints, I have worked and worked and worked, not to brag… but its really true… I feel quite exhausted to be honest after carrying the large frames yesterday from one end of town to my university. And it does not stop there, I then had to take them to the other side of town to have the frames measured for mount board so that my printed images can be framed etc…
- Adobe Photoshop process
So with the printing side of things, I have played around with Adobe photoshop to change the context of the image. Like I explained already in my last post, I am trying to drag out the shapes and textures from within the images that people don’t always see. I am trying to emphasise the textures and shapings more because in memories we get a vivid outlook on remembering thing and all people do to remember is pick up on shapes, textures and contrasts.
This is what I am trying to express here,,, by using a tool such as ‘stamp’ in photoshop is what makes this image become a reality! If done by etching would take more than a few months to do just 1 image and the shadowing would not be that good compared to the dry-point etching… Trust me I know this because I was once doing etching in my first two years of my BA so as far as I go,,, this is further progress since those old time consuming days!
- Photo Emulsion process
So the next part was doing the print out of these 4 images from the roll of acetate in the printing room and making sure first that my images are at 300DPI and the right size which would be 56cm x 42. So all of this played a crucial part in getting this right so in the end I did manage to get them all printed successfully. So what did I think of them when I printed them out?
I thought that the images looked so clear and immaculate with great resolution and I thought that they even looked great on acetate. So now I was ready to get the technician to put the photo emulsion on the silk screens for me and then wait for them to dry after about 20-30 minutes. But… the photo emulsion was out of date#@!*…. So… I had to buy my own Emulsion plus sensitizer which cost me £27 from Ebay but still was not happy about this as I had to wait for another week longer… Once this was all done I then got the technician to expose the 4 screens with my images but there was something wrong with one image!!!
So there was an error?
Of course like always you get errors from time to time but just one exposure would not let me expose one image called ‘The Leaning Tower of Pagoda’ would it?. Because of the high tech detail within the structuring of this monument in this image,,, the photo emulsion failed to expose resulting in missing pieces of the image… Did I let this stop me? no way! I was so eager to get this successfully exposed so that I could print it in the nicest way possible.
- The Printing Process
So within my printing I think you already got the logistics of how I print through screen only this time I am working with just one colour layer only. Not like the 9 layered Chairman Mao with the different colours and things but I do not just want to work with lots of colours because I like black and white too. I chose to work in black and white because it reminds me of memory and light with darkness uncovers the images that we render in our minds like shapes and textures too. So anyway…I print through silkscreen by using the Black ink onto the Fabriano paper and I screen press 2 or 3 times making sure I get the best quality ink result.
Also having a faulty camcorder for this process job is not likely to win you best Oscar awards thats for sure… umm… so I have tried to make best use of it as I possibly can with the slight pause and cuttings off from when I am trying to talk about something. But managed to record what I needed in order to show you how I did this process the best way possible so please excuse me if some parts do not seem right.
What did I think of my end result within my finished prints?
To be honest I feel that in my deep self,,, I have come a long way since the old school dry point etchings that I used to do. I wanted to change this idea to silkscreen instead to insure that you get much more shadow and light quality than those etchings I used to do. I believe that I am making further progress in my work after everything I have had to do to get this far so I do feel happy about what I have achieved. my prints look 100% the way that I expected them to look in my mind and I like the deep dark crispiness edgings of my 4 images.
Notes for the future?
I may start to develope this printing method much more by doing more than two or three layers in different tones of greys and using black as the last layer to go on top. I have not worked this out yet because I have only just learnt to walk rather than running ahead of myself after just discovering my new printing method. So I will submit these 4 images in time for pretty’s in frames by the end of this Saturday coming… After Christmas I will work on how to develope more layers in these images and hope I can solve it.
Please feel free to see my short few minutes of commentary of how I did my 4 chosen prints for Pretty’s exhibition.