Mini Print Project

On Tuesday we were given a mini print project. I think this was a good idea as it put us under pressure and we had to use the techniques we had already learned from the workshop to create two identical prints based on the brief title "clutter". To me, the term clutter means useless pointless objects that take up space and there identity and beauty are lost in all the chaos. I had the skeleton of a broken umbrella in my room with a pile of other useless objects. To me there is something eerily beautiful about this umbrella, its like a creature. I decided to take it away from all the clutter and brought it outside onto the street and photographed it on the cobblelocks in the lashing rain.

An over flow of receipts!

I wanted the receipts to really look like they were taking up my space in my studio so i cut up some of  my weaker prints and arranged them so they look like they are overspilling from one of my prints all over the place causing havoc.

Trying to capture the deteriorated state of receipts.

I wanted to try capture the deteriorated appearance of the old receipts in my prints . I attempted this by monoprinting a faded barcode in gray ink on top of a dirty blotchy yellow monoprint. I then printed my inked up dry points on top of these monoprint. I think the piece worked well

Printing On My Receipts

I etched in separate drawings I did with my receipts using a scribe, how ever black on white just seemed rather boring and repetitive and it wasnt capturing the old grubby cluttering qualities of the old receipts. So I monoprinted a bright yellow and using white spirit i wiped away certain areas, I got the yellow ink slightly dirty with some of the used oil rags as I though this would achieve the grubbyness of the crumbled pieces. I then thought it would be effective, and bring my prints into another dimension if I actually printed on the receipts themselves. I asked one of my tutors and she said she wasnt sure if it would work as they only usually print of tissue or crepe paper but we decided to experiment with the receipts. First I placed my inked plates on the press , I then tore up some of my old receipts and placed them on top of the plates. We then used these special white crystally glue things and sprinked them on top of the receipts, and finally we placed my wet yellow monoprints down and these were the results which I think were every effective.

PLEASE RETAIN YOUR RECEIPT

On closer inspection of my receipts, I noticed that pretty much all of them say "PLEASE RETAIN YOUR RECEIPT". I decided I would do a small etching of these words, as they tie in greatly with my project and really bring my prints together by adding a phrase commonly associated with old receipts.

I also noticed on every receipt there are also barcodes with numbers underneath. We see hundreds of these barcodes everyday and think nothing of them, they themselves become rubbish and meaningless to me with my receipts. I did a lightly scratched dry point etch on acetate of a barcode

My Old Receipts

 I first did a sketch of the receipts spilling out of my purse, I really liked this drawing so I decided it would be really good for a dry point etch. I never did drypoint etching before, I've never done print before at all actually! Anyways, I etched it into my acetate plate, but unknowingly I scratched in too deep, so I wasn't left with the fine lines in my drawing, but more like marker thick lines in my prints. This was not the effect I wanted so I am now etching separate receipts  on acetate and I'm going to cut around them so I can position them any which way I want in my prints. Even though this etching failed, it was a learning experience, and I now know how deep a line I should scratch in so I wont be making this mistake again (hopefully)

Printmaking Elective

This past week I've been doing printmaking as my first elective choice. I've never done print before so I am really enjoying it and find the different processes really interesting and I'm learning something new everyday down in the workshop. We were giving the project title " Defining our Space". I thought this woud be a really interesting title to work with as it is rather broad. I chose to look at how my purse is crammed with pointless old receipts that I never throw out and they take up so much space and they are completely pointless to me in the end and how I alter my space with materialistic objects that have no meaning or importantance in my life and are also symbolic of how all this money and consumerism in the end WON'T be important.

Photography

I got my hands on some beautiful cable wires and they are great to photograph as they light bounces off them and they bend easily and create great intricare shadows

Long Grass Tubes.

I really liked to photograph the long grass which I got from kerry as it reminded me of the images of hair which I had photoshopped. I then decided to photoshop these pictures aswell. I sharpened them, zoomed in and changed the colours completely, varying from bright yellow to deep blue and they no longer looked like the long grass. I didnt want these images to remain 2D as the grass itself is thick and almost tube like in structure. I bought some large mail tubes and also just used toilet roll & kitchen roll tubes. I painted the inside black and super-glued the images of the grass neatly onto the tubes. I realised this was very much like the 2D images I had created about a month ago using water colour and lines, so I was extremely happy with the outcome.

This is the 2-D image I had previously created and I think that the tubes are a 3-D representation of this.

A piece from my sketchbook..

 This is just a piece that I did in my sketchbook today. Using charcoal I did and upclose tonal drawing of my sculpture made from toothpick. I really enjoy photographing this sculpture because you don't really know what it is and there are so many different angles

Long Grass!!

As I further explore natural materials which resemble the movement of hair, I have noticed that the long marrow grass from sanddunes is much like my photoshopped images of hair!

More masking tape!

I tried the masking tape and paint method again, yet this time I layered 5 different colours of paint aswell as layering the tape so when I peeled it all off it created depth and movement. I did this on canvas as the paper kept ripping and I wanted to see how it looked with being torn, even though I think the imperfect paper suggests movement regardless.