Printmaking: Letterpress

Before modern printing methods were invented, text was printed using a machine called a letterpress. Metal letter alphabets are kept in cases in a chest of draws, and you select which letters you need and arrange them in a frame.

Since this was an induction lesson we were working in partners. We were given the task of selecting our initials from the cases and arrange them into a design. This proved rather difficult since you have to use 'furniture' and wedges / locks to keep the letters in place and we spent a rather long time trying to figure a way of making an interesting arrangement that would stay in the frame! 

Eventually I found a way of keeping the letters in place (which wasn't very effective but it did the job XD). I had the idea of using a gradient when applying the ink so I went ahead with this. For letterpress you use oil based ink since they are on a wooden base and using water to clean them can cause damage over time which is bad since the letters are no longer produced and one tray costs around £500+! Anyway, we clamped paper into the machine then used the handle to roll the drum over our frame and press the ink onto the paper. and that's it! Quite a simple process the there's lots you can play around with such as layering, various fonts and scale. 

Printmaking: Fabric Printing

Following our screen printing induction, we were taught how to print onto fabric using the screen technique. Again, a two layer image was given to us, and our teacher had exposed our screens for us just to save time, but I have a post about screen printing that explains how! --> http://amberatlantis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/printmaking-screen-printing.html The only difference is the screen mesh is 43tw to let more ink through and the image is exposed for longer since fabric absorbs more ink. 

Pigments are mixed with one of 3 binders:

• Transparent for keeping the colour the same saturation - great for printing onto light coloured or light weight fabrics
• Opaque T binder which can be used as white or to create pastel colours - ideal for printing onto dark and/or heavy weight fabrics
• Opaque KP binder - Used for printing luminous shades onto dark fabric

We pinned our fabric down to keep it flat and in place when printing, making sure any creases are ironed out before hand. Just like screen printing, you apply a generous amount of ink at the top of the image and then use a squeegee at a 45 degree angle to pull the ink towards you and covering the stencil. Make sure each layer is dry before you apply the next one - you can use a hair dryer to speed this up if you are pushed for time!

When all layers are applied and dry we seal our design using a heat press (although you can also use an iron) and remove the emulsion from the screen using cleaning solution and a jet wash.

  

Printmaking: Screen Printing

I had done screen printing before at college, but it was so great to have an induction at university because they have a lot more equipment to make the process easier and produce more accurate prints. The screens were even ready to coat and use yourself - at college I had to stretch the mesh over the frame myself!

Fist we coated our screens in light sensitive paint then we were given two layers of the same image on A4 paper since it was just an induction lesson. We placed these images in a huge ultraviolet light box and then the screen face down on top. We closed the lid and then a vacuum removes the air to keep everything in place during the exposure. The light exposes the paint in the light areas of the screen and this forms a stencil.

Using a jet wash we washed the screen to remove any paint in areas we don't need so our prints came out nice and crisp. When it the screen had dried from this step we masked off the edges with parcel tape and if there were any accidental holes in he paint then this can be covered with the tape too.

To mix ink you mix acrylic paint with acrylic printing medium. At uni we have a shelf of pre-mixed inks too so we just picked colours from here to save time.

We clamped our screens into the frames and created a registration print on masking tape so we could align the print into the centre of the paper and line up the two layers perfectly. To create the print you put a line of ink at the top and then use a squeegee at a 45 degree angle to pull the ink towards you over the stencil. 

When everything's finished and you're happy with your prints you use a cleaning solution and a jet wash to remove the emulsion and leave the screen to dry ready for the next person to use.

I really love screen printing - it's a great way of creating multiple versions of the same print in the same colour and position and you can vary aesthetic style a lot. I was happy with my prints. My piece accidentally got slightly mis-aligned when doing the second layer but I think it looks cool because with the colours me and my partner picked out it looks like red and blue 3D imagery.

  

Printmaking: Cyanotype

Cyanotype is a process developed in the 20th century originally used to produce blue prints. It's similar to the photograms I created during my foundation course at college (http://amberatlantis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/skills-rotation-photography.html) except the result is blue and white.

Since our project is based around identity, we were asked to bring in objects that have significant relevance to ourselves. I bought in a CD case and ear phones because I love music, as well as some ocean animal figures to signify my relation to the ocean. I also produced a shoe print onto a sheet of acetate by painting acrylic onto a pair of boots that have the anarchy symbol moulded into the sole. We put them on paper that had been coated in light sensitive paint and put them under UV lamps / in direct sunlight to expose them.

After the exposure the green / yellow paint turns a dark green. The print is then washed them in a tray of water with a tiny amount of peroxide in, and then rinsed them in pure water. This removes any of the paint in unexposed areas and develop the paint into it's blue colour. We left them to dry and then the process was complete!

I was really happy with my shoe print because it's quite detailed and you can see the lines from where the acetate was - I like how ghostly and x-ray like it appears. The print that I used 3D objects with didn't come out as I expected because I left it in the sun as the UV lamp was unavailable, and this created shadows at an angle, where as if I put it directly under a lamp this wouldn't have happened. I tried to create an ocean scene where the ear phones formed the sea and waves then the dolphin and shark would be characters in the scene, but again the angle of the light makes it hard to tell, but I'll keep that in mind for next time!

 

Skills Rotation: Photography

Photography was the workshop that I was most excited to take part in by far. I had never had a proper photography lesson in my life, but I have had a passion of taking pictures for several years. I got a DSLR camera for my birthday last year (Nikon D3100), and I was eager to learn how to use it properly! 

We were given the theme of 'Street' and was told to focus on a subject relating to this. For the first two weeks we went on a self guided exploration in the town surrounding our college to take photos. On the first shoot I decided to focus on urban decay, and more specifically areas where posters / stickers had been put up then torn down:

I was moderately happy with my photos, I feel that I could've been more inventive with angles but I wasn't too fussed as the first shoot was only to get ideas going. On my way back to college I bumped into my friend, Dan, and he told me to take a picture of him walking. This made me think about fitting the theme of identity in with street, but in the end I didn't carry out this idea. 

The second time I went out I was photographing some more decayed posters near a park, and on the way back I came across a telephone pole that wires had fallen down onto a tree next to it. I thought this looked like the tree was wired up, and I could link the concept to my ideas in other lessons as I was looking at neo-futuristic imagery subjects and forests. Therefore I decided to create my street series around the tree on the street: 

In the third week we worked into prints of our favourite photos using art materials and techniques such as collage, paint and stitching.

The last week was probably my favourite part of the rotation, as we learnt how to make photograms. Our teacher showed us how to use an enlarger to expose objects onto photo paper by focussing the light and altering the aperture. For my photograms I decided to use the same barbie doll I used in the plaster moulds rotation (http://amberatlantis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/skills-rotation-plaster-moulds.html) as well as some ivy and twigs.  

Once the objects had been exposed to the light on F-11 for 10 seconds, I put the paper in developer solution and then into a series of water baths to wash off the chemicals. This was done under red light in the dark room, I just took the photo to the right after everyone was done. Since I want to incorporate photography in my career (I photograph live gigs outside of college), the tutor showed me some more advanced techniques, such as painting onto the paper with a paintbrush dipped in developer solution, and creating handprints with the developer too!

Here are my final photograms presented in my portfolio (apologies for the terrible quaility and horrible lighting haha) :

Skills Rotation: Plaster Moulds

In this two week workshop we were taught how to create plaster moulds to produce press moulded pieces from clay. Last time I produced a plaster mould was 3 years ago during GCSE when I produced latex prosthetic makeup wounds, so I was excited to repeat the process at a higher skill level. 

We were told to bring in an object that we wouldn't mind getting ruined, and all I could really find was an old barbie doll from when I planned on making my own prom dress. I decided to create a two piece mould as I'd only ever made a one piece mould before, and prepared the object for moulding by removing the clothing and I pulled her head off so the hair didn't get stuck in the clay. I rolled out a clay base, then built up walls half way up the doll's body and outer walls that were at least 1 inch above the highest point of the object. I ensured there was a pouring hole and no undercuts, as well as adding key holes so the second piece would lock together with the first. 

Next I mixed the plaster by sprinkling the powdered plaster into a bucket of water and mixing it with my hand - squeezing out any lumps and removing air bubbles. I poured this into my clay forma and left it to cure for at least 24 hours before de-moulding.

For the second piece I followed the same process, but before I could do this I had to clean the object, wall up undercuts and add 3 layers of a soft soap release agent as I was adding plaster to plaster. 

Finally I cleaned my two piece mould with a damp sponge and it was then ready for me to make a cast from the plaster. 

I really enjoyed this process and I would like to try including it in my other college projects. However, next time I need to keep in mind the few mistakes I made:

• I used the doll's neck as a pouring hole but and built the walls around the legs so when the cast was made the material I pour into the mould would go straight through, so I would need to fill these gaps with clay before casting.
• Do not mix the plaster to vigorously as it can add air bubbles and make the plaster set before it's poured it into the clay forma. 

WW1 + Joan Littlewood's 'Oh, What a Lovely War' Exhabition

2014 saw the anniversary of the 1^st world war, and one of the top theatre makers, Joan Littlewood’s birth. In 1963 she developed a stage adaption of ‘Oh, What a Lovely War!’ – An epic musical that highlighted false ideologies / propaganda about WW1 in comparison to what it was actually like. Our college teamed up with RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) where Joan Littlewood attended, to produce an exhibition for the local community themed around WW1, ‘Oh, What a Lovely War’ and Joan Littlewood’s biography. We were required to develop ideas for and produce a theatre-related product for this display.

The plan of the exhibition i.e. the layout was a collaborative process between our entire Foundation Art & Design class. In the first few weeks of planning we discussed ideas and potential problems about the arrangement, as well as devising a list of what we thought should be included in the exhibition. Some of the things we thought of were food and drink for guests, information about the exhibition, a variety of work and possibly a craft workshop for people such as the college’s Saturday art club to take part in.

With this in mind, we broke up into smaller groups – each one covering a different aspect of theatre: makeup, costume, set design, scenic art, prop making / puppetry, film + photography and marketing. Since I’m interested in graphic communication and illustration, I decided to join the marketing team along with 3 other people. Tackling organisation in our group wasn’t a problem as there wasn’t that many of us, so it was easy to share and combine our ideas into a group effort as well as undertake individual projects. We also nominated someone to be head of the team which turned out to be a good idea as they provided direction and general guidance with our concept development, all though we all contributed equally.

Being part of the marketing group meant that we had to produce promotional material for the event, as well as outcomes to be displayed in the exhibition itself. We were inspired by WW1 propaganda posters, and mainly developed our ideas through printmaking techniques such as lino and monotype since this is how old posters are likely to have been made when modern print methods such as lithography didn’t exist. Whilst experimenting with this, I made a collage of all our lino cuts in my sketchbook and the rest of the team thought that would be a good idea for our exhibition posters and leaflets, and so we continued trying several layouts and colours until we reached our final design(s).

We didn’t encounter many problems on the journey, only minor ones such as lettering coming out backwards on prints but we all learnt from our mistakes. The only major problem was how we were going to fill the space in the gallery since we could only judge what wall space would be available until the last minute when we could physically see what the other groups had produced. In the last few weeks of production we saw that the scenic art would take up most of the wall space, especially since two of the walls in the gallery were made of glass so there were only two walls available. We overcame this by deciding to nail our work onto wooden crates, which personally I feel was more effective then presenting them on the wall because it was a unique and fresh idea, and also fitted with the iconography WW1 – the exhibition’s theme.

I was put in charge of creating labels for each piece in the gallery by our course leader. I spoke to my team mates and we decided to use individual segments of our prints and combine them with text in a typewriter font to emphasise the era. I went round and ‘interviewed’ all the groups to find out their processes and inspirations, then typed this up and stuck the text and print to card.

I also took the project in an individual direction to focus on typography, as I mentioned I am interested in illustration and type is a big part of this, and also I hadn’t played around with letter forms much since starting the foundation course and saw this as a good opportunity to do so. I experimented with materials and lettering in my sketchbook through a variety of media, and I liked the idea of making letters from masking tape and then working into them with other materials. I pushed this idea even further and used the masking tape letters as stencils, and also tried different types of tape such as duct tape and parcel tape. For the exhibition I decided to create a mixed media canvas as I used to involve myself in the mixed media arts and crafts movement as a hobby. I sketched out several composition ideas, then developed one by combing it with elements of other concepts. I made my final outcome on a 25x20cm canvas with parcel paper, card, ribbon, acrylic paint, hot glue and masking tape. I will admit my piece was a bit rushed and I think I could’ve developed my ideas in more detail, but I was happy with the outcome.   

  

  

In terms of the exhibition plans, I sketched out some layout ideas and incorporated design elements inspired by 'Oh, What a Lovely War!' such as the red ribbon that guided a soldier through the fog at the end, as well as separating backstage and front stage groups. We measured the space and took into consideration where the projector would be. When it came to installing the final exhibition no one really followed a specific plan, we just tried placing mannequins and our crates etc. in various places and saw what looked best in the space.  We considered how it would look from both inside walking around the exhibition, as well as the glass window at the front of the college.  

We held a private viewing of the exhibition, and guests such as people working for the ‘Artists Access to Art Colleges’ aka the AA2A project visited and gave us the feedback that they were impressed by our high achievement and they would be willing to run a workshop for us to explore theatre making in more detail. RADA employees were also invited to this viewing but unfortunately never showed up. After the private viewing the gallery was open to our main target audience – the public – specifically those interested in the war and/or theatre.   

I think the exhibition was very successful; we utilized the gallery space well by filling as much as we could without it looking clustered, and you could see a clear link between all the pieces as we followed the same themes of WW1, ‘Oh, What a Lovely War!’ and Joan Littlewood’s life. This was apparent through muted colour, horror / period imagery and the distressing of certain materials. This meant we successfully met the criteria that was set at the beginning in September / October. Overall it was a very enjoyable experience and SI loved collaborating with other students in my class since we do a lot of individual work.