Reflection on Assignment 4

Looking at the criteria for assessment at HE level 4, I would asses my submission for assignment 4 as follows:

Overall, I think I am showing signs of improvement despite the limited time I had available to complete this section of the course. This time would rate my overall performance as good/average (C). I am confident that with continued improvement in part 5 of the course, as long as I meet my final deadline I should be able to achieve a passing grade.

Development of technical and visual skills

I would evaluate myself as a C overall in this area - I have made quite a bit of progress in the learning of techniques in part 4 so I think I have developed good technical skills however, design and composition is the area in which I still lack confidence

Quality of Outcome

Again I think a C (Good/average) because my work is well presented and I am increasing my competence as a printmaker. I am also showing evidence of judgement by changing tack and trying a different approach when it is clear that a technique isn't working for me. 

Demonstration of creativity

C - good/average. I am showing some independent judgements and there is some evidence of my personal voice in the work at this stage

Context

C- good/average. I have looked at a broad range of materials in preparing for this assignment. Unfortunately owing to time constraints I have not had time to write up everything that I have looked at, read and experienced so far - I am therefore confident that I can improve on this next time. 

I am looking forward to the challenge of part 5 - I've made a lot of progress (since starting off as a complete beginner) but I want to really move forwards in all of the above areas of endeavour before I complete the course.

Assignment 4 Submission

Task 1: Project 11

In this section, all of the prints are taken from A4 plates therefore the paper size is just slightly larger than A4.

Descriptive statement: The plates for these prints were created using a large variety of materials including foodstuffs (lentils, rolled oats, bulgur wheat) fabrics (e.g. lace, denim, nylon mesh, hessian) and papers (wallpaper, foil, kitchen roll, masking tape). I have also included various organic materials (eggshells, cork, dried plant materials, feathers) as well as string and sewing thread. The base plates were made of cardboard which was sealed with PVA glue and the plates were sealed with clear acrylic lacquer before printing.

Task 2: Project 12

In this section, the first three prints are taken from A4 sized plates whereas the last two are from an A2 sized plate.

Critical Statement

Decades of working in a healthcare context as a veterinary surgeon have not blunted my fascination for biology, health and disease. In fact they have only served to fuel my enthusiasm for the architecture of the body and its associated organisms both on a macroscopic and microscopic scale.

I created these prints for assignment 4 of the Open College of the Arts Printmaking 1 course which requires the use of collagraph techniques. The second requirement is that the works should be representative or figurative. This is the reason for the inclusion of the industrial landscape here which is incongruous among the rest of the work. The remaining three prints are abstracts which use photographs, micrographs and electron micrograph images of the heart, brain and bacteria respectively as their starting point. 

A number of artists have influenced my choices in the construction of these prints. Brenda Hartill is a printmaker who makes use of collagraph in her work. I am particularly drawn to her abstract collagraphs which are inspired by the landscape. Her prints are alive with texture and rich with colours. I have also been inspired by the drawings of Daniel Zeller whose abstract works have a distinctly biological feel to them and are replete with examples of repetitive mark making. 

I plan to push this line of inquiry further. Looking more deeply into the way that biological structure relates to function as well as how ideas about bodies (human and other animals), health and disease have filtered through western culture into language, mythology, superstition and works of art and literature. This is an ambitious task - I'll be taking it in very small steps.

Project 12: Collatype collage prints - Part 4 - "Colony"

For my next attempt I decided to work on a larger scale and to develop on from the etchings I did on the intensive printmaking course this summer. I drew a basic design onto an A2 piece of mat board and started cutting and peeling as well as sticking and gluing. I created shapes by peeling in two corners of the plate as well as applying smooth foil which would wipe clean. These areas represented firing strands from an expanding colony. In the central area I used various things to create circular shapes of varying sizes: The contents of my hole punch, printmaking paper, cartridge paper, foil tape which I also drew on with a Biro to create patterns on its surface. For smaller dots, I applied drops of PVA and sprinkled them with carborundum. I also used the nozzle of the glue bottle to draw patterns in PVA. I thoroughly enjoyed creating this plate. 

After ensuring everything was stuck down I coated the plate with several layers of shellac.

The mat board I used was black as it was the only board I had left in my studio. This wasn't a problem when I was creating the plate, but I realised it was not a good base when I started inking and wiping the plate because I couldn't really see how much was left on the plate. 
I decided to ink in two colours an olive green and a dark blue-grey. The fact that I couldn't see the inking meant that I wiped away a lot of ink that I would have left if I could see and also, despite using bits of yellow pages to try to stop fingerprints while I was wiping, I managed to leave fingerprints all over the place. 

 Because of the fact that this is an abstract design and most of the focus is in the centre of the page, I found it difficult to decide what the orientation should be. I had originally intended for the print to be displayed vertically but I kept rotating it and in the end decided on a horizontal orientation. 

I then reprinted. I inked up as before in blue and green but this time I relief rolled over with the blue/grey ink. 

I found the rolling over very difficult because my roller was much smaller than the plate. It created lines at the edges and this meant that I had to go over and over the plate to try to eliminate the lines. I didn't manage to completely eliminate the roller marks. The print ended up being much darker than the previous one. I had tried to ensure that it wasn't too dark by wiping back selected areas at the edges. Although the print is darker, I think the tonal variation is adequate to create interest and I particularly like the way that the relief ink has picked out the surface detail of the central circular pieces creating good contrast with the green.

Close-up of the central area.

I would have liked to continue experiment with inking and wiping this plate in different ways. Unfortunately I had run out of large printmaking paper and time so I really needed to submit assignment 4 at this stage. 

What I learnt:

• Black board is not a good choice for a plate - white or pale is better for seeing where the ink is and how much to wipe
• Try to keep your holding hand flat on the paper when you are wiping to avoid fingerprints
• Drawing with PVA creates wiggly lines which can be wiped pale. 
• Dots of glue with carborundum take up the ink very well. 
• Rolling over a large plate with a small roller is problematic. 

I have struggled on a couple of my prints with the fact that I have small brayers which can't cover a large plate in one pass. This wasn't a problem when inking my lino projects because  I could go over the repeatedly until it was evenly inked. However, this is a problem when rolling over collagraph plates that are already intaglio inked. One way to get round this would be to buy a very large spindle roller. However, this is beyond my budget right now. So I'll have to think of other ways round it. When I have some more paper, I plan to try relief inking only selected areas of a collagraph plate by using stencils or masks to protect other areas.

Project 12: Collatype collage prints - Part 3 - 'Brainbow'

Stimulated by a MOOC (Massive online open access course) entitled "What is a mind?" run by the University of Capetown and delivered by the chair of neuropsychology Professor Mark Solms (1), I became interested in the philosophical questions surrounding the difference between the brain and the mind. One question posed during the course was whether we had encountered a work of art that effectively illustrated the experience of having a mind. Many students responded with illustrations of the brain with various additions such as flashes of light or colours or light bulbs or cogs. I didn't feel that these really illustrated the experience of having a mind but more the cultural concept of how the mind comes from the matter of the brain. In some ways, all works of art illustrate the experience of having a mind as having a mind allows us to make decisions. Decision making (even the decision to leave things to chance) is essential to the creation of any work of art. 

Neuropsychology is an interesting branch of science because it attempts to link the physical structure and functional processes of the brain with human behaviour, cognition, psychology and emotions.(2)

Following on from this course, I looked at some illustrated books which encompass our ways of imaging and illustrating the brain itself and the development of cultural notions about the brain over the years in which it has been studied(3),(4). There is a mismatch somehow in our conception of the brain as it appears in reality as a greyish, nondescript, gelatinous yet convoluted organ and our perception of the mind and the soul. This is a gap which it isn't really possible to bridge in a simplistic and reductive scientific way at this point in time. 

The books which I read (3), (4) contained some outstanding illustrations. Some of the most arresting images came from the so-called 'brainbow mouse'. The images were of photomicrographs of the brains of these mice. The images are beautiful with an array of luminous and almost fluorescent colours. However, the way in which the images are produced makes me very uncomfortable. These laboratory mice were bred specifically to enable mapping of the synapses and organisation of their nervous systems. Initially, cells were made fluorescent by inserting jellyfish genes. Eventually the brainbow mice were bred. Their cells can be distinguished from each other more easily than normal mice because each cell produces different coloured proteins because of genetic manipulations. After photographing microscopic sections of the brain (obviously after killing the brainbow mice and slicing up their brains), the colours are enhanced digitally in order make the details easier to study. (3) The result is a stunningly beautiful image. 

I made a lot of sketches in my sketchbook inspired by various images in the books:

I then continued to look more closely in particular at the brainbow mouse images:

Sketchbook 'Brainbow' in water soluble markers

Sketchbook "Brainbow' using watercolour, permanent markers
and an acetate sheet

Monotype 'Brainbow' created using water soluble pens on a
sanded piece of perspex

I had read about the silk collagraph technique in my printmaking books (5) and (6) and I wanted to try it out. I had bought some cheap, fine synthetic fabric to substitute for silk organza so I constructed a plate. 

My first attempt at a silk collagraph plate

The plate was constructed by first adhering the fine fabric to some cardboard using black acrylic paint. After this was dry, I painted onto the fabric with acrylic paint of varying viscosities from very thin mixed with water to thick straight out of the time. I also painted some shapes using gesso and stuck on some shapes cut from foil tape for and extra smooth surface. 

I encountered a number of technical difficulties with this project: 

1. The fabric didn't adhere particularly well but I didn't want to apply any other glue because I was afraid that this would flood the grain of the fabric and stop it picking up ink
2. I created lots of small shapes which I wanted to print in bright vivid colours enclosed in a dark background which created a headache with inking and wiping and made me wipe the plate inadequately
3. I inadvertently picked up the wrong paper - I didn't notice until I put it in to soak. The paper was more like blotting paper than the Somerset printmaking paper I had mistaken it for. 

The results were not impressive:

First attempt at a silk collagraph. Underwiped and printed
on the incorrect type of paper

Ghost print from the same plate as above

Because there was too much ink on the plate it squeezed out when it was printed and went over the edges making marks all around the print. The only thing that was impressive to be was just how bright the colours were and how clean it was possible to wipe the smooth foil shapes. 

On the third pass through the press there was still ink present on the plate. I worked into this print while the paper was still wet using intense blocks in a last ditch attempt to salvage something from this experiment. However, it was clear that it would be necessary to find another way of producing the image I wanted:

Ghost print and inktense

After a conversation with a fellow student on social media, I decided I would try using two plates. One plate primarily for blocks of colour and another with textural elements. I first attached a sheet of 'sand paper' which is textured paper for pastel drawings onto the hardboard base. I then further constructed the textural plate using thread and by drawing with PVA from the nozzle of the PVA bottle. After these elements had dried, I flooded the enclosed shapes at the bottom of the plate with more PVA to make them easier to wipe. I coated the plate with shellac and acrylic lacquer. 

Plate constructed using sandpaper, sewing thread and PVA

For the colour plate, I placed a stencil in roughly the same shape as the enclosed elements of the textured plate on the hardboard base and then I spread gesso over the plate leaving the area covered by the paper stencil without gesso. I also scraped lines into the gesso using a chopstick. Once the gesso was dry, I roughened the surface of the un-gessoed area using sandpaper and other tools in an attempt to make this area hold more ink. 

Plate made using gesso, a stencil and a chopstick

I realised that printing these two on the same paper would be a challenge because I would need to work quickly. Paper expands when wet and shrinks as it dries and so any delay could result in a registration issue. I decided that I would ink both plates and have them ready to go and then rapidly print the colour one followed by overprinting with the textural one The plates were also thicker than the cardboard plates I'd used so far. I overcame this by making a mat board jig which served a dual purpose of aiding registration and reducing the step over which the rollers would have to travel. 

I used a number of different brightly coloured inks "alla poupee" on the flatter colour plate and I used only dark indigo ink on the textured plate. I experimented with different ways of inking and wiping as follows:

Textural plate printed alone in indigo using intaglio inking technique

Two plate print using intaglio inking (alla poupee on the coloured plate) The edges are not sufficiently wiped.

Two plate print. Colour plate inked 'alla poupee' and intaglio wiped. Textured plate inked using both
intaglio technique and a relief rollup

Two plate print using a ghost print of the colour plate as above and a second relief rollover of the
textured plate. 

One think that I noticed was that the the pastel 'sandpaper' didn't hold as much ink as I had expected so the background was lighter than I expected. Maybe I had over lacquered the surface and made it too smooth for maybe the texture of the pastel paper wasn't pronounced enough. However, the lighter than expected background had the benefit of allowing the colours from the other plate to show through clearly. 

It is very interesting to note how much difference can be made to prints from the same plates by just altering the way that ink is applied and wiped. I was quite pleased with the results of this two plate technique and it is something I would like to try again moving forwards. 

Looking at the print. It is really purely abstract with a starting point of the illustration. It doesn't attempt to say anything about the unfortunate mice nor indeed about neuropsychology.

What I learnt:

• Silk collagraph isn't easy - I either need to do lots of practice or go on a course in added to be able to use this tool effectively
• Trying to apply lots of colours to small shapes and wipe them without muddying them is impractical
• foil wipes very clean if you want a bright white area on the print.
• It is important to check you are using the right paper!!
• Two plate collagraphs can allow the use of multiple colours with less risk of excessive mixing. 
• Having the two plates ready and inked before you start printing is a good way to overcome possible registration issue caused by paper shrinkage (although printing wet on wet coat result in colour mixing it doesn't seem to have been a major problem in this project)

References:

(1) https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/what-is-a-mind
(2) https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/neuropsychology
(3) Kwint, M. and Wingate, R. (2012). Brains : The Mind as Matter. London: Wellcome Collection.
(4) Schoonover, C. (2010). Portraits of the mind: Visualising the brain from antiquity to the 21st century. New York: Abrams.
(5) Stoltenberg, D. and MacKenzie, R. (1975). Collagraph printmaking. Worcester, Mass: Davis Publications.
(6) Fick, B. and Grabowski, B. (2016). Printmaking. A complete guide to materials & process. Rev. ed. London: Laurence King.

Project 12: collatype collage prints - Part 2 - 'Heart strings'

I have spent some time researching the heart and the brain recently. (I will talk about the brain in my next post).I was inspired by a couple of MOOCs (massive online open access courses) I had participated in over recent years. One of these was about medical humanities and the incorporation of art and humanities into health care(1). This one raised some philosophical questions about the heart and heart transplantation from the point of view of surgeons, patients, literature and art. 

I also read a novel entitled 'heal the living' (2) which looked at how the lives of all the people involved in the central event of a heart transplant were affected: from the parents of the donor to the doctors, nurses, the recipient of the transplant and their family. It was a very powerful novel which I would thoroughly recommend.  I would like to explore these philosophical themes further, but for the time being I am taking baby steps and I have contented myself with the physicality of the heart. I have been inspired by microscopic and macroscopic images of the heart, the heart muscle and the papillary muscles and valves. Some of the microscopic structures bear striking similarity to other macroscopic structures in their form. Others are simply beautiful in their own right. I have previously made several sketches of these images and a linocut of the papillary muscles which had an architectural, cave-like appearance to it. 

I used one of my sketches of the papillary muscles as a starting point for the collagraph print which I created on the intensive printmaking course at Centro Dedalo. The title 'heart strings' refers to their use in our culture as a metaphor to describe for example an emotive work of literature or music "plucking your heart strings". The chordae tendinae are the strings to which the metaphor alludes.

This collagraph was constructed on a piece of mat board. I made shapes and lines by cutting and peeling away pieces of the surface of the mat board to differing depths. I then applied various pieces of card, paper and fabric using PVA glue. I particularly enjoyed manipulating, stretching and pulling a piece of scrim to apply to the plate. After sticking the pieces securely to the board, the whole plate was coated with several layers of spray-on transparent plastificant. The advantage of this is that it makes the whole thing impermeable to moisture but it is a fine spray so it doesn't interfere too much with the texture. Thicker coatings such as yacht varnish or PVA glue may clog the finer textural elements, thus reducing their effect in the final print.

My first collagraph plate - the photograph was taken after printing so
there is ink residue present. 

On the course, I only had time to make one print from the plate because we covered a lot of different techniques during the week. The photo below is the print I made on the course. This one was printed by first inking the plate by the intaglio method in a bright crimson. After wiping, I relief inked the plate in a dark blue using a single pass of the roller.

First print from the plate. Intaglio inked in crimson and relief inked in blue.

The rollover in blue provided good contrast with the red. However, either there wasn't quite enough ink on the roller or the diameter of the roller was too small so it completed a full revolution before the end of the plate. This has made the relief inking a bit patchy in the top third of the print. 

When I returned home, I decided to experiment with making some more prints from this plate. Although I had thoroughly cleaned the plate, there was still some residual ink present so I applied a coat of clear acrylic lacquer before I started.

I decided to try intaglio inking "alla poupee", applying different coloured inks to different areas (I used stubby stiff paintbrushes rather than a pad of scrim or felt because the areas were relatively small. For the first attempt, I used a combination of Hawthorn sonic lipstick pink, hawthorn sonic orange and hawthorn indigo. I was hoping for a fiery halo of orange around the papillary muscle fading out to a subtle pink:

Second print from the same plate: Inked all poupee in indigo, sonic orange
and sonic lipstick pink. Too much colour blending.

This print didn't work out as I had envisioned. I had inked all of the areas simultaneously and then tried to wipe them. I found it impossible to wipe the small adjacent areas without blending the inks. This meant that instead of a lovely bright orange focus in the central area, there was a muddy brownish grey. 

I decided to try again using just two colours. This time I applied and worked in the darker indigo ink then thoroughly wiped the plate before applying the pink ink in selected areas. This time the colour blending wasn't so bad. Although, on balance, I think I still prefer the first print with the combination of relief and intaglio inking because I like the halo effect around the more prominent pieces of textural materials. I think it has more visual impact. However, there is something somehow more tranquil about the lighter and less contrasting intaglio inked image. 

Third print from the same plate: Selectively inked and wiped in indigo and
sonic lipstick pink 

What worked well:

• Progressive peeling of layers of mat board for the creation of texture and depth
• Combining intaglio and relief inking on the same print creates good contrast
• some of the textural elements showed up very well e.g scrim, leaf skeleton. 
• inking one colour and wiping it before applying a second colour

What didn't work:

• Inking adjacent areas in different colours and trying to wipe them at the same time can result in muddy colours
• some of the delicate textures are destroyed by being fixed with PVA glue because it floods the texture. (For example fine mesh)
• Insufficient ink on the roller or a roller of insufficient diameter (so it completes its roll before the end of the plate) can cause patchy inking at one end of the plate
• The composition isn't great. If I were to re-do this print I would probably make the papillary muscle larger and less central. 

References:

(1) https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/medicine-and-the-arts

(2) Kerangal, M. and Moore, J. (2016). Mend the living. London: Maclehose Press.

Project 12: Collatype collage prints - Part 1 Industrial landscapes

For this project you will be working towards a series of representational images the previous section it was pointed out that detail has to be simplified when using collage to represent objects. With this in mind choose a subject where you deliberately have to reduce the amount of visible detail by selecting varied materials to suggest a texture.

I was disappointed that the course notes specified that the prints should be representational at this stage because I had decided to take my work in a more abstract direction. However, during the course I have attended several workshops. One of these at Leeds Print Workshop was experimental collagraphs using various types of tape. During this workshop I produced these images of industrial landscapes using duck tape, textured floor tape, masking tape and foil tape. What follows is a repetition of my account of this workshop:

When I attended the collagraph/monoprint workshop at Leeds Print Workshop, it occurred to me that the combination of tapes we used to create texture (duck tape, anti-slip tape, masking tape, foil tape and many more) would be ideal for creating the textures of an industrial landscape. The tapes themselves are also used by plumbers and in industrial settings so I liked the idea of using them to produce a print representing their usual habitat. 

I first created a collagraph type plate with several layers of tape. I didn't do any pre-planning of this plate - I just used the shapes I had in my head from previous attempts to represent this subject and let it develop as I went along. I decided to try to create a sense of depth to the landscape by using different tapes for the foreground, middle ground and background areas. I used the thickest tape for the foreground shapes which was the anti-slip tape. This is like thick sandpaper and produces a speckled texture on printing. 
I used duck tape for the mid ground elements which has a texture caused by the threads within it. For the background buildings I used masking tape which has quite a close texture. I attempted to create an impression of smoke from the chimneys by applying crumpled foil tape (the type used for sealing chimneys and ducts) I quite like the irony that I am representing smoke by using tape that is used to keep smoke contained!

I started off by printing directly from the collagraph plate onto cratridge paper. I first printed in process yellow then overprinted in process magenta and indigo. There were some parts of this print that I really liked. The bright yellow haloes around the foreground chimneys, the subtle gradation of indigo and red on the background shapes and the sky as well as the texture for the smoke all worked quite well (although the smoke looked a bit too solid). However I had not managed to register the print well enough and the slight offset created a bizarre effect with the foreground shapes. The offsetting of the little dots of colour produced by the anti-slip tape made my eyes go funny! It reminds me of a blurred photograph or interference on a tv screen and is difficult to look at. 

I took a second 'ghost' print of the plate onto wet cartridge paper (intaglio technique) - this transferred mainly indigo ink but with very small amounts of the magenta and yellow which remained on the plate. It picked out more detail of the texture of the duck tape.

Single layer collagraph print on soaked cartridge paper

I proceeded next to adapt this collagraph into a monoprinting technique by offsetting the image onto a monoprint plate to allow me to manipulate it further.  I re-inked the cardboard collagraph plate with a combination of yellow and indigo. I then placed a plastic monoprinting plate of the same size directly over it and sandwiched the two between layers of newsprint before passing them through the etching press together. This transferred the ink from the collagraph plate to the monoprint plate. There was still a small amount of red on the collagraph plate so this also transferred especially in the area of the smoke and age background buildings. 

After obtaining my offset image on the monoprint plate I was free to adapt it further. I used cloth and scrim to wipe into the sky and to break up the outline of the foil smoke shapes. I also used the tip of a sharpened pencil to draw windows into the distant building. I pulled the print onto cartridge paper using the etching press. I was quite pleased with this result. Note that the image is reversed by the offset printing process. 

Offset collagraph monoprint three colour print with subtractive
drawing on cartridge paper

I took a second print from this monoprint plate onto coated paper

Second pass 'ghost'  monoprint as above

I then cleaned my monoprint plate and re-inked my collagraph plate with plenty of red and yellow ink. I offset this again onto the clean monoprint pate. This time I decided to accentuate the foreground instead of drawing into the background. I rolled indigo ink onto the monoprint plate and wiped away to leave only foreground chimney shapes. I got a bit confused as to which chimneys were on which side of the print and plate so the shapes are not accurate reproductions of the printed shapes underneath but this adds additional depth to the foreground. The registration is slightly off. 

Multilayer collagraph monoprint

I took a ghost print from this and then overprinted again with additional yellow. The registration was not great but his gave a dirty smudgy effect which I think is quite appropriate for the subject matter. I realised it was time to stop at this point before I managed to create mud from too many layers of mixed colours. 

Multilayer collagraph monoprint

 I hope these are sufficient to satisfy the representational aspect of this task as I have decided to pursue the line of inquiry I am more interested in at this stage and move ahead with more abstract responses to microscopic and macroscopic forms in nature.

What I learnt

• A makeshift collagraph plate can be used to create landscape textures
• Offsetting the collagraph onto another plate allows additional manipulation of the image
• Spontaneous working without too much planning is sometimes better that having too fixed an idea of the outcome you want as it allows you to respond to what actually happens when you print