If at First You Don't Succeed...

After my last attempt to print my new plate and messing it up I was determined to achieve the results I desired in the studio today! After an early shift at work I headed for uni armed with cardboard boxes that had contained the delivery. When I got to uni I made up a couple of folders from the boxes to contain my work to be handed in for assessment.

Once I had gathered my work together in the folders I was eager for a successful session of printing! I inked my long thin plate for printing, rolled through the press, to no avail! The plate had been over wiped in areas and, again, I wasn't happy with the print. Although my efforts hadn't been completely wasted, at least my plate would be beginning to take the ink and the next print taken was almost guaranteed to be better than the previous attempts.

And... it was! Finally! Bellow is the successful print!

I also had a plan in mind to try when printing this plate, and now I had a basic print of it, so I decided to try it. I inked up the plate and wiped off the excess ink as normal. When the plate was on the press ready to be printed I randomly placed on a selection of different sized rectangles I had cut previously from some tracing paper to mask ares on the plate. I took this idea from an ething I had seen by Chris Olfili called Castell Harlech and can be seen by following this link.

I like the contrast between to flowing lines and the rigid square shapes. Before, the eye followed the lines and swept through the design, where as now, I find, you are not quite sure whether to gaze at the pattern or be attracted to the rectangle shapes with their bright white and wonder why they have been placed in such a way. Quite a different outcome than my previous prints.