Okay hi I'm Andrew. And I'm Stacy, and welcome to our home studio that also happens to be our living
room, gym, and office. It's no MassArt print studio but we're making it work.
We are so excited to be so involved in this year's auction.
Tonight we'll be demonstrating three print techniques to give you an idea of how some
of this year's auction pieces were made. I'll be demonstrating how to print a woodcut and
I will be demonstrating how to print from lithography and intaglio plates, thank you.
All right, so relief is a very straightforward process. All you do is roll ink across the top
of a surface it's typically wood or linoleum. Here I'm using wood it's four small little blocks
taped together to create the image spaces that have been carved away will show the paper
whereas the rest will print the ink. Put the rice paper on top and then a layer of newsprint and
chipboard to protect protect the roller on the press and then run it through. Another great
thing about relief is you don't need a press all you need is a spoon and a little muscle.
And that's relief, traditionally lithography is done using greasy drawing materials
directly onto the surface of limestone or onto a ball grained aluminum plate,
but I use a photographic process to expose my image onto an aluminum plate.
I did not do that in my apartment but luckily I have access to studios elsewhere.
Now lithography is a process that's totally based on the idea that grease and water don't mix,
so the gum arabic I just put on the plate is going to make all of my non-image areas water loving
meaning when I sponge the surface of my plate and then I dry sponge, so that the surface is just a
little damp. All of the non-image areas are going to be holding onto water molecules and repelling
my oil-based ink so that the ink only sticks to my image area. I need to charge up my roller and
ink up my plate a few times to build up that ink on the surface before I can print on the press.
I'm using this process to print my Shinkoli paper so my rice paper that will later be mounted onto
a thicker paper when I print my intaglio plate once I have a print I need to repeat the process
the sponging the inking all of it for every subsequent print.
Now once those prints have dried a little bit i'm able to ink up my intaglio plate and
combine them together on a new surface Again I'm using a plate that I have
made elsewhere I am doing a photographic technique on a photopolymer plate
but this is the same way a more traditional copper plate etching would be printed-
but rather than etching my metal in an acid bath I am using a photographic process to
expose my image onto my plate. Push all the ink into the grooves and wipe the surface clean
with a tarleton and then do a paper wipe with some clean newsprint. So unlike Andrew's relief block,
I am printing all of the grooves and nooks and crannies in my plate instead of the surface layer.
Now that my intaglio plate is ready to be printed, I can go ahead and add the glue to the back
of my lithography print which was done onto a rice paper I'm using roll attack glue which is
a great option, uh it gives you about 10 minutes of working time so I roll that evenly on the back
of my rice paper, being careful not to shift it on my newsprint. No one wants to glue their
print to their plate. Then I can carefully place my paper onto my plate and shift it to the press
and then I can go get my other paper my thicker etching paper that has been soaking in water,
and blot that dry so it's just damp, and lay that on top and run the print through the press.
As the plate is being run through the
plate is being printed and the first print is also being glued to that backing paper.