Tutorial Challenge

I've been a bit confused since my AL tutorial with Natasha Kidd. I feel that what she said was very useful and I agreed with her.

She said that the good thing about my prints was, that I had my own style going but, on the other hand, the fact that there was a border around them made them seem contrived. I don't exactly know what she meant by that, but they do feel a little bit limited, to me.

I need to branch out a bit, experiment with the prints....I feel I can do this. At the same time, I need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I don't just want to chop everything up in pieces.

My original thinking with prints was, that I needed to try something different. I had mainly focused on oil painting and portraits and wanted to be more adventurous. I wanted to experiment. But it's hard to start in a new medium, especially one that has so many technical restrictions.

I also wanted to link this piece with my oil painting of two people on the train.The sense of the blur and movement of the train going past, with glimpses of the people in the windows.

With hindsight, I could maybe have achieved this effect in a different way with a linoprint. But this medium is slow, it's unforgiving and, as I said, it is completely new to me, and it's a steep learning curve.

I needed to get some breathing space, so I tried something a little bit different.

I photocopied the two tube prints and created a blur by making the picture wider each time. I found that photocopying the photos in black and white created a rough, almost mysterious effect, in keeping with the original style of the photos I had taken.

Damp paper and other experiments

Over the weekend I experimented with a couple of prints. First of all, I dampened the paper before printing. This was a success. The paper held the print much better if it was damp. I also used 'packing' on the press - putting extra sheets of paper on the one printed to make a heavier impression.

The other thing that I played about with was the mix of ink. I put two colours on the ink stone and rolled them together on the plate. This created an interesting blend.

I discovered that it's easier to print light colours than black (or at least, the imperfections are not so obvious when printing with light, bright colours on white paper).

Here are a couple of examples, side by side, with different weights of ink and different blends of light grey and light blue.

Andro Wekua

Yesterday I saw work by Andro Wekua, a Georgian artist who lives in Berlin, at the Saatchi Gallery. I really liked one collage, called Black Sea Surfer. It had the feel of a woodcut.

And I had the feeling that I could work in a similar way with linocuts, making a tiled image, putting together different blocks, a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.

Today I printed the last colour of my suicide print and also two new tube prints.

I started off by brushing down each print with an old toothbrush to get the dust and trimmings off the plates. Any dust on the roller is a nightmare.

Suicide print, final colour
1. At first I wanted to use a clean solid blue to print on top of the slightly creamy light blue. I squeezed out some blue and looked at the colour and realised that it wasn't the contrast I wanted. So I mixed in just a smidgen of black which created a darker blue.
2. I feel it went well:

 The main problem was achieving perfect registration – in other words, lining the plate up perfectly with the print. On a positive note, the colour went on well.

Here I am, wiping excess ink off the plate (in the non-printing areas) just before printing:

With the tube prints – even though they might come across as similar, they are different experiences to print.

The plate with the people dug out has a far greater surface area for ink so it was important to get enough ink on the top of the design. The first attempt didn't come out too well even though I really layered the ink. Tried it again and it worked a little better but still not sure what the problem was.

There are technical difficulties with printing using an old (1872) press. Getting the right pressure across all areas of the linocut is hard.

The plate with the people printed and the background dug out went better; there was less surface area, so therefore it was easier to print. I was really pleased how this turned out. A little patchy in the bottom left-hand corner for a couple, but I soon realised that applying more ink and turning the plate upside-down helped matters.

This is the second plate (the one that was easier to print) inked and on the press:

Lessons to learn, today

• Clean the plate properly.
• Make sure the print is properly lined up
• Make sure there is enough ink on the plate
• Make sure when I am digging out the lino I dig out enough so I don't get little bits of ink showing up in the spaces.

This week I have been working on two linocuts. I intend both to be one colour (black) but let's see how it goes. Both are the same image, but opposite ways around...

In one cut, the people on the tube are black and in the other, white.

When the people are black, the background holds the most negative space, so if I print over a photograph, most of the photograph will show through.

When I think about a tube I think about an enclosed space, a cave.

I wonder what would happen if I were to print the people over an outdoor space, eg fields, treees - lifing it out of context, making a connection between the 'trapped' people and their imagination.

I'm going to try both ideas. I'm more interested to see how the print with the people printed will work out.

Another thing I could do is treat both prints as different plates of the same final image, print them one on top of another in different colours (the way standard printing works, actually). I'd like to see how this works, but I am a little concerned about how I'll line up the images.

I've been thinking a lot (ie, worrying) about ideas and final pieces for my exhibition over the last few days.

I find that going to galleries and exhibitions helps me sort through the thoughts in my head, but sometimes these visits throw up more ideas, and these make life more busy and confusing. For example, Paris Montparnasse, by Andreas Gursky. Neverland by Damien Hirst. The scale of both works is impressive. In Gursky's work, it was strange being at eye-level, peering into rooms, seeing people staring out from some of them. Hirst's work was like a huge kaleidoscope and I liked the way that the mirrors distorted the size and shape of the drugs in this vast medicine cabinet.

I've recently been working on two prints one suicide print which is interesting because I've never attempted it before and it has always stroked me as being a hard job and difficult to get my head round.

The yellow print (first colour of suicide print):

Preparing the blue for the second part of the suicide print:

The blue on the yellow:

 Another print I'm working on is in black-and-white, of the inside of a tube train, from a picture. I am thinking of incorporating a picture in the print. I guess working from Patrick Caulfield.

I guess with the suicide print it's more about appearance and how it ends up that I'm interested in; I like seeing what can be done on a one-way journey.

(It is called a suicide print because it is a one-way journey; once you have cut out lino for a colour, that's it...you can't go back. You can see above by comparing the yellow with the blue. At the end, there's hardly anything left of the lino. All the detail is on the print.)

With the monoprint and feel I can show some meaning and work with that, cutting it up, maybe working with its shape more...

Suicide Print

It has taken a while, but I think I have got my head around how to make a suicide print. To work it out, I made a sketch, then drew each colour in the sketch as an underlay, on a separate sheet of tracing paper.

I am working on a three-colour (plus white) print. It works like this:

• Cut out the white areas. Print the first colour (yellow).
• Cut out the yellow areas. Print the second colour (light blue, say).
• Cut out the light blue areas. Print the third colour (dark blue, say).

It sounds easy, but I found it hard to put together.  I have to explain it to myself, like this:

• At stage one, the yellow covers all areas except where I want white. 
• At stage two, the light blue covers all areas except where I want yellow or white - because I have cut the yellow out, now, so it won't be overprinted. 
• And at stage three, the dark blue covers all areas except where I want light blue, yellow or white – because I have cut the light blue out to stop it being overprinted - and the yellow and white areas have gone already.

It feels strange, like working backwards. I shall take pictures, to show the progress of my first attempt.

Building a Box

I have an idea around building a box. I imagine a long tunnel of a box with images on the far wall. Maybe use adapted mirrors, tracing paper and holes in one wall, at different places. Or perhaps use a wide-angle door spyhole or two, as mentioned earlier. Perhaps play with the idea of perspective in the box, too. And give people the opportunity to look at the image through different mediums. And use cellophane for one wall, or different coloured plastics, to create different lighting inside the box. I am not sure where this is going but I feel that there is something in this...oh...I need to try to make this, play with it...

Seeing very little

I am thinking of a picture in which all that is seen is a fuzzy image -  obscured tracing paper. The translucent, or semi-opaque paper prevents the viewer from seeing the finer details of the picture. And perhaps leave a gap between the image and the tracing paper, so the viewer can look at the sharper image if they want to.

Make it more difficult, perhaps, for the viewer to see the clearer image. Placing washes over glass would work perhaps as well as tracing paper.

This is all about questioning what is seen, particularly what people see of other people who are nearby, close...distant...

Cupboard: an idea

I like the idea of building a cupboard with shelves. On the shelves are images, stacked up against the walls, heaped up on the shelves.

Perhaps have a fish eye lens (like the one in a front door) to allow someone to see into the cupboard. My grandad made a boat inside a box that could only be seen through one of these lenses, so I know it works. Artificial lighting would be needed – or perhaps a roof made of cellophane.

Black-and-white images, and colour images. Pictures of people lying on the shelves. Or tacked on with masking tape.

The carriages on the Tube are like a waiting room, for example, in a hospital. Or like one of those overful cemeteries I have seen, abroad...stacked up in a Portuguese cemetery, or heaped up like the gravestones in the Jewish cemetery in Prague.

Perhaps play with what can be seen in the cupboard...showing it through a semi-opaque mirror that only allows a partial view of the images inside. Or a painting of the cupboard, a big clinical picture, with images of people, and perhaps their imagined thoughts, added too...

Alternatively, have a cupboard that is empty inside, but covered with images of people on the outside, to show the emptiness at the centre of the journey...

Underground, Underwater

I like this image, blurred to make it seem that the Underground is underwater...a fish tank... And this gives me the idea of working with boxes, somehow...

Merging Images 2

I have tried merging two images of the same person at different points in the journey. I still think of these pictures as notes.

Sitters

There is something special about capturing strong images of the people who sit close to me in trains. I think the best thing to do would be to make an album of these pictures.

Merging Images

I have been playing with some of the photographs I have taken of commuters... I am not sure why. A busy station, the underground at London Bridge, say, seems a metaphor for the way the lives of commuters blur, merge... Seems clever to have Private Eye in the foreground...my camera is the private eye...