Sunday, August 1, 2010

City Printing

These past few weeks in the city are the weeks that I have learned the most from Kathy. Here are a few things I was able to experience and lean about….Methyl Cellulose and its powers! It is German archival glue that makes Chine-collĂ© flawless. I was also excited to find a new type of plate called a styrene plate, which are compressed packing peanuts. This is the plate that Midori Curtis used in her prints. It is white and feels like plastic but you can cut it up easily and you can get some great colors on it, the application of ink is smooth.


I was able to do some research on Mezzo Tint, which creates a middle tone in black and white prints. The book I used was by Carol Wax. I also got to see some of her personal prints that Kathy purchased from her. She had a mezzotint of an old fashion typewriter; this print looked so close to a photo it was memorizing. These images look so realistic because of the shadows and middle tones that are created. Carol called Mezzotint a product in “The age of Reason.” You pre-pare the plate by using a rocking tool, which makes the metal of the plate stand up. Next you go back into the plate with a burnisher and work towards an image by putting white into the image. This process introduces patches of light, and adds an immense amount of depth by creating all different gray tones with different uses of pressure.


This Thursday and Friday I helped Kathy prepare for an upcoming show that she was asked to participate in. I would scan in her prints and make adjustments in Photoshop and teach her about some of the options she had in Photoshop with printmaking. She is letting me be her collaborator in her show! This is so exciting, anything that I helped her with she had me sign and date so I could get credit for it. Her pieces that I was collaborating on with her were based on her trying to make her own art and not copy the artists work that she has been printing for lately. She has been influenced by the work she has been printing, but that work has not been her own work, so this series is about he finding he art through process.


Next week Kathy is going to teach me embossing in printmaking and from what I understand you can do it in many different ways. Crible, which is the hammering of holes, is a form of embossing.


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