We started a new module: print workshop on Wednesday 10/03/21 with Srin. This sounds so exciting and will be a really good new way to boost my work in different directions. See initial notes below – I had so may ideas flying around my head to play with for this module.
IDEAS: images to use Are You Watching?, To Bite, Just a Nibble or Two – could create a series of works from the Riso e.g. stills from different films I have created. Line drawings from Level 5 would make interesting layers!
Reflection 21/04/21: As I have began to create, I now know to use clear imagery – I used Sweet Tooth B&W photo which was very dark (printed almost all pink). I feel too many layers would loose the identity/imagery and currently working with text from Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing Women and don’t want too much confusion of text/imagery.
The Riso print machine is a printer that prints like screen print except it only prints in pink, blue, yellow and black – the pink and black would create striking images in relation to my work!! Srin suggests to work from light to dark e.g. yellow, pink to black. There are no rules to layering images or patterns, as busy or as simple as I like. Placement of the image of the paper can change the appearance/outcome, I wish to work with miss-placement/out of line images when layering. Coloured paper comes into play with how vibrant the colours will be.
Firstly you edit the colours out and into black and white, the same way you would for screen printing, see below. I began to prepare my own images for next Wednesday’s session. From my notes above, I followed the step by steps given by Srin in order to prepare for the Riso. It was fairly straight forward, firstly you choose your image/s you would like to use and put them into photoshop. I trialed the image I used to project for Are You Watching? first because there’s some great shadows there that would work brilliantly when bitmapping. Edited it to grayscale and then adjust the levels of intensity, I went fairly intense so it creates block like colours from the Riso.
Then you select image – mode – bitmap and edit the intensity/how many dots you wish to have. This effects the detail of the image – either being abstract or in-depth. This was hard to know how intense or soft to go until I place the image through the Riso. I trialed another image from Are You Watching? which I set less intense levels/dots. I can’t wait to trial printing and experiment with paper and colours!
I then wanted to try some different images e.g. 3 stills from Just a Nibble or Two, I followed the same process but played with different intensity of frequency of dots. The aim is for 2 to come out more dark/intense than 1 and 3. Could make an interesting graduation of images if I wish to layer them off set them from each other. I chose not to create them as a Bitmaps, I am interested to see how they will come as black and white images.
Reflection 21/04/21: Bitmap works well as one layer for example, but not all 3, the images becomes very textures and you lose the detail. I prefer the outcome of original images.
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I chose to also trial a bitmap from this series to see how different will it appear when it is printed through the Riso and if bitmap does have an impact on just B&W images. See screenshots of process below. It would be really good to play with black on top of pink for this image to really bring out the shadow and darkness in the picture – may make it feel almost grotesque?
Final outcome:
These images will be great to trial with printing for Wednesday’s session. I also attempted some shapes/background patterns in the same process as the images above! See below, I wish to use these among the images above to experiment with layering & see what works! I used different brushes on Photoshop as well and techniques when creating these. – Could create a line drawing on there & import to bitmap?
