Prints and Printing

Prints and Print making

Motif follows a lot of my work and for this I thought that experimenting with printing would perhaps make for interesting concepts. Prints allow you to make multiples of the exact same thing without too much by my of discrepancy between each print. 

For this I also wanted to start working in more of the art nouveau elements that I found so aesthetically appeasing so as to create prints that would look good wither on their own or as a group. 

My first print was one of my fungi women which I carved into lino and printed in red ink - the colour of the fungi cap that adorns her head. I wanted this to be more messy looking and whimsical, like she appeared out of the ink blob itself, so I decided to be lose with how I applied the paint to the lino block she was carved into, creating this effect;

For the next set of prints I wanted something more professional to look at, so I worked out a simple, yet elegant design on paper before hand to transfer onto my lino to get a smoother cut as well as to retain as much detail as possible.

For the printing process, it took me several attempts to get the right amount of ink for a crisp print but once I managed to do this I was very happy with the results. Even the challenge of doing the lettering backwards so it prints correctly worked in my favour. 

As much as I enjoyed doing prints with these motifs, they weren't quite what I was looking for in my work as I enjoy the creative freedom allowed to you by paint and pencil as every part is changeable, unlike with printing.