Printmaking: Week 5

It's really more like week 7, but I've been away.

Today I sat down with Caroline and discussed where I'm going with my project as I've missed a lot of Printmaking sessions and the deadline's looming; I need a final piece!

From looking at my sketchbook at my drawings of a taxidermy pheasant and sketches from the zoo, we discerned that my strengths lie in simple illustrations on wallpaper and incorporating the floral wallpaper designs into the drawing.

From here we discussed wallpaper designs, the Victorian era and birds. We also decided that, due to time factors, it would not be beneficial to continue experimenting with different print techniques and I should instead focus on mono printing. This is quite disappointing as I would have liked to have had a chance to try silkscreen printing, but time is running out. The idea of using mono printing for my final piece came as a shock as I have found it difficult so far and have not been impressed with the images I have produced (see week 1's disastrous experiments if you don't believe me!)

However, I am willing to keep trying with the mono prints. The best idea is to keep practicing, I can't exactly get worse. I made a few experimental mono prints today by simply tracing an image from my sketchbook that I drew at the Horniman museum (pic of drawing).

I have a lot of more focused ideas now, so after some thorough research I will be able to begin work on my final designs.

Rose Power 22/11/10

How many prints did you make? 2

How many of these taught you something new? both did; it's been a while since I've done mono printing and, though I know how to do it, there is still a lot of room for improvement in technique. Also, I have only made mono prints by drawing freehand in the past, today I traced an existing drawing and it was interesting to compare the finished print to the original sketch in terms of aesthetics.

How many hours did you spend in the printmaking workshop? 1 - the rest of the day was spent at the computer, researching.

Assess yourself this week for:

Competence in printmaking techniques : Though I was returning to a technique I had used before, I feel I have not improved a lot as my work still looks very amateur. I need to practice more over the next week.

Thoughtful and imaginative approach to printmaking: I certainly did a lot of thinking this week, and tried to imagine how things would translate from initial drawings to prints. Mono printing lends itself well to experimentation as it is fairly quick to set up and very quick to produce. I will be able to try out my designs before I produce the final ones, to see what works well and what doesn't.

Visual Sensibility (understanding and expressing ideas in images): see above. I need to focus on WHAT my ideas are going to be before I try to express them... What do I want the images to be saying?

Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: I spent a lot of time researching today so I have a lot of relevant and interesting resources to work from now. I could look at more artists to see what they do well, and what I aspects of their work I can use/ manipulate. I think looking at modern interpretations of Victorian ideas is a useful and interesting aspect of my research.

Active participation in taught sessions: I spent a short while looking at other people's work at the start of todays session, to consolidate my work with theirs and try to fill in the gaps I where I have missed taught sessions. It was helpful to do this, but also intimidating - most people have done a lot more work that me, as I have been in hospital.

I give myself a score of : 75/great. I have made good progress today with ideas, despite being intimidated by returning to printmaking after such a lot of time off.