Printmaking: Week 8

Today I printed my final pieces

Rose Power 27/09/10

How many prints did you make? 3x A1 ‘wallpaper’ samples.

How many of these taught you something new? These were my final pieces, but I still feel I learnt something new from them, having not worked to this larger scale before. It was difficult to stop the paper curling up and to remember which images to trace onto which areas, considering my design would be in reverse. I also realized after printing onto plain paper as a practice, that this might actually look better/ less cluttered than my original plan to print onto wallpaper.

How many hours did you spend in the printmaking workshop? 9

Assess yourself this week for:

Competence in printmaking techniques: I think my mono printing technique has excelled as I started the course having never tried it before; my first attempts were atrocious. I’m happy with the execution of my final piece because, although it looks blurry, this was inevitably going to happen due to printing onto thick (wall)paper and I quite like the unusual effect.

Thoughtful and imaginative approach to printmaking/Visual Sensibility (understanding and expressing ideas in images): The outcome I envisioned was very similar to what I actually achieved, although it’s difficult to make out the shapes of my birds as I ended up adding a lot of floral detail around them. However, I like this as I was aiming for them to look ‘trapped’ in the rest of the wallpaper, and only visible when viewed closely. If I was to make the wallpaper again I would make the birds smaller and more spaced out, as when I tried printing only 3 birds, as opposed to 6, they looked more distinctive.

Using research to expand knowledge, enrich thinking and affect your work: I found I was able to incorporate research successfully into my work, but as I was using new techniques I had to carefully consider this when researching. I think I managed to gain inspiration from Victorian wallpaper and the era in general (focusing on zoos, travelling the world, collecting exotic treasures etc) as well as adding my own personal, contemporary input.

Active participation in taught sessions: Despite hospitalisation and snow, I think I have managed to catch up the hours I missed, but I wish I could have more time to experiment, as this was the main aim of the project. If I had been able to attend more scheduled studio sessions I would have been able to bounce ideas off other students and compare my progress to theirs. However, the times I was in the studio, I made sure to have a look round and take in what was going on. This was really interesting as everyone had very different ideas, though we were all given the same brief, and I would like to see their final pieces. On unscheduled days I also talked to 2^nd year students and looked at their work. This was extremely useful as they could give me advice from experience.

I give myself a score of: 95

Pictures of some of the 6 final images before I printed them all onto one big sheet of wallpaper.

I printed 3 together to look at spacing.

The finished wallpaper design on plain paper

Wallpaper

Wallpaper with spaces

I prefer the middle one, which was going to be my final piece. I like the blurring from the ink being slightly too thick, but other people might not have the same appreciation for happy accidents. I like the way the 6 designs are linked together with additional foliage that I drew in, rather than being 6 distinct drawings.