Evolution of the print

So I talked a little about the evolution of this print in my previous post- the benefits and limitations of materials etc. I wanted to do a post that was basically a concept to physicality one- showing what I planned and then showing how it came out. I wanted to show the layers of colors digitally and then how different the print stacked up.

First the digital print I made up.
The physical block print was a tiny jigsaw with  the image measuring 4" by 5" (plus a bit) in real life. Digitally I made the mistake of making the image size bigger (roughly 10"x12") then zooming out allowing for a crisp clear image.

The print was a jigsaw print which allows each layer to have two colors printed at once. This is the first layer digitally that was planned. Each layer was transparent (hoping it would reflect the transparency of the ink) so that the colors would gradually build on each other creating unique colors by overlapping. I had some great experiences with this technique from past prints.

Layer one: green bottom, blue top (the lines would be the final block but in the digital images are present on each layer)

Then layer two grey on top, orange on bottom:

Layer three has red added to the bottom. This is where digitally it started to feel like I was building a reduction block print- bearing in mind everything that stays the old color would be carved out.

The fourth layer I had as "navy" but it was supposed to be a tinted purple on both blocks top and bottom resulting in a navy-esque optical mix on top and a red violet optical mix on the bottom.

Of course the FINAL final layer would have been the black lines and the solid black middle of the car window. In the digital images you get a better sense of the motifs in the print- The theme was "The Drive Home" and I racked my brain until coming up with this idea- I knew I wanted something looking out the window and the original thought for this came from remembering, as a child, looking out the window and seeing dragons in the sky ( I loved dragons). 

The car window sticks out as a car window and the book frame shape looks like a book; if you pause and step back from the ACTUAL real life print it looks like a book but you have to step back- it's not as immediately *bam* hit you over the head with it as I wanted. I wanted it to look more like you were looking on the pages of a book with the car window being reality and imagination swirling all around it (a little cheesy but that was my aim).

Above is the full shot of what this tiny print looked like. For size reference because there's nothing really to gauge by- It's sitting on a whitman's sampler box, the paper size is 5"x7" and the vertical height of the image is 4". You can see I struggled with getting the opulent jewel toned background colors I wanted- those come from the ink transparency. My colors ended up being really thick and opaque. I had to stop a layer early because each layer on the block was getting really gummy as the ink slightly dried before I could get a full run off. 

The problem with the ink lead to a conflict with the digital plan where I put the navy layer and the red layer in the same run to prevent myself from having to print it 50 times ( I made 25 prints knowing I could lose a lot of them along the various layers). With the two colors in the same run and skipping the purple layer I could only run the block once (25 times). Printing by hand was a slow experience, and after the base layer I knew I had to do anything in my power to shorten the amount of times I had to run them through. To get the print totally done I did layer 1 (blue/green), layer two (grey/orange), layer three (navy/red) and layer 4 ( black lines and solid center block) which means I printed each of the 25 prints 4 times- that's essentially 100 prints. They were small but I still found it immensely challenging to focus that long on being careful with the delicate paper and such. 

Above a close up of the dragon; you can see the idea/design was the same, but the execution was bulky and the ink didn't adhere to the paper in a nice even manner- of the 25 prints, three or so of them I went right through the paper trying to get the ink to stick. Other times I loaded it up with too much ink and the ink pulled up the previous layer of color or splurted off the sides of the lines making them sloppy. The layers were patchy on a lot of them.

This is another shot of the full print- there are some problem areas but overall it turned out better than I thought it would. Half way through I was definitely saying "I don't know about this..." As you can see in this one the orange really didn't take to the kiwi birds, so I have a pair of pretty green kiwi birds where they should have been an oranger color. After the second layer turning out hit or miss on all 25 prints, I sort of let go a bit and just powered through. Some turned out well, and others were really missing large pieces. I really am attached to the design though and I think it could be so fantastic if done larger with more texture and an actual press with better materials. So I log that one for a future project. 

I also got my prints in the mail today from the print exchange- I was ready to be disappointed after all the trouble I had with my print I imagined other people would have had similar failures- but I was pleasantly surprised. I got three that I didn't care for because they were either technically not good (for irksome composition reasons mostly) or they were "so easy a caveman could do it". I got a really nice little etching, a tiny litho print and even a neat mixed media print that has reduction print mixed with screen printing. I like most of them and even Steve was excited to look at them up close. I love owning other people's prints because when it belongs to you, you aren't ashamed to touch it and run your hands over the ink bumps and really check it out in a different way than you would in front of the artist because you're worried about offending them. 

Mostly I was impressed and I enjoyed the different takes on the theme and the skill with which the images were done. I could really tell who put their time in and who just BS'ed it at the last minute. There was only one or two where I could not tell what media they were made with (either screen print or maybe a solar plate?) something about them almost looked like a digital print and I feel that if they ARE that's shitty and cheating. 

The End for now. Maybe I'll post the prints I got in  the next post- but I want to make sure I watermark em and credit the right artists for them because while I own the physical prints I don't feel like they are "my" images.