So many colors so little time

I am working on a two block linocut that will be printed this week. I carved both blocks, photographed them and am playing around with color options before I go mixing tomorrow. I liked several different ones for different reasons. If you have any opinions, let me know. It'll go through the press on Thursday...

The print is for a portfolio I was invited to join. It's due at end of April, but I need to get it done since I'll be out of town for the whole month. When I get mine, I'll post some of the cool prints. I am really looking forwards to it. Some awesome printmakers are going to be a part of it. If you have a place to exhibit it, let me know and we can put together a show.

Anyways, here are the four that I liked the best:

News and events

HI and good day! I am so happy that spring is knocking on our door. It gives me lots of energy to work and get things dine, which comes in a good crack, since I am trying to meet all kinds of deadlines before a month long trip out of town again...

I am curating a show from the La Familia Gallery for a space in Finland. It is tedious as normal to put all the information together from 18 artists. I just finished ordering the card for our show. So I am patting my back and relieving myself to get some lunch before I dive back into all the paperwork.

Our show dates will be April 20th-May 22nd, 2010. The reception is open for all on April 20th 5pm-7pm. The gallery is Gallery Golden Point, at Asematie 1A (through the inner court), Nummela, Finland. You can email the owner at raili.saloviin@goldenpoint.fi. Regular hours of business are Wed-Fri 11am-6pm, Sat 10am-1pm, or with appointment.

I wanted to add a couple of pics of recent things I have been working on. I had made a series of linocuts last year, they were larger, so I wanted to be able to print them all on one page, so I scanned them all in, and made a polymerplate out of it. I printed relief on my little etching press, on natural colored stonehenge paper. There was a heavy embossment, so here's a picture of that.

The whole print...

These two are a recent commission of two children. I rather like the way they turned out, and the customer was very happy. What more could I want!

Z-Acryl testing results

We did some testing with the Z-acryl litho plates a while ago. I finally got to taking some pictures and editing them.

In the first picture you can see all the different media that worked - and did not work on the plastic.

• All liquid pens, permanent markers, sharpies, micron pens worked well.
  
• Regular acrylic paints printed solid, but where there was a slight dimensionality to the paint, it would give effect of a collagraph. Pretty cool.
  
• Asphaltum worked pretty well. It came off in areas where it was applied very thick. So if you use it make it a thin coat.
• Any kind of waxy medium like litho crayns or colored pencils did not work very well, they come off as you roll stiff ink on.
  

Now apparently, from my research, litho crayons work on Pronto plates. I have never used Pronto plates, but they are basically same as the Z-Acryl plates, but made by a different manufacturer and they are translucent. If you are looking for more into on how to make and print Z-Acryl plates, you can also search under Pronto plates, and get a whole bunch of sites.

Here are some that have some interesting info:
A great how to and digital how to from Kevin Haas
nontoxicprint.com
Another trial print by the Printmakerguy

One of the great tips I read in the third link was that if your plate starts picking up ink in unwanted areas in the middle of printing (scumming), you can wipe it with a solution that has a small amount of gum arabic and a pinch of citric acid in it. Apparntly picks it right up. So far I have been able to release the ink by just applying a solution with gum arabic on it, but I will keep this in the back of my head in case a crisis arises...

Ok, so as I had mentioned in a previous Z-Acryl post, you can run the plates through a lazer printer or copier. We gave it a shot too with an image that happened to be on the computer ready to go. We ran it through the printer and rolled it right up. I the printer heats the toner hot enough to set it on the plate. So here are some pictures how it turned out:

This is a closer up.
I just did this on the computer to see what would happen if we rolled each image up with a different color and printed them on top of each other on the paper.
Here is a super closeup where you see the halftone pattern of the digital image.
So hope that was helpful for some of you. If you just stumbled upon here and have no idea what Z-acryl lithography plates are, please go check out my instructional video here.

Classes Starting up in Feb

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The time for the relief printing class got moved to Friday afternoon. I have a spot open if you want to sign up. Fridays 11am-2pm, starting on Feb 19th.

I got enough people interested in a polymer plate class, and that will be meeting Saturdays 12.30pm-3pm, starting on Feb 27th.

Both class descriptions and syllabuses are available on my website front page (lower right corner).

Photopolymer / Solarplate Links

I had a great time doing a demo on polymerplate printing last tuesday. Here are some of the resources that were on the handout for the class:

Where I buy my plates: www.photopolymerplates.com/ Kim Becker - owner, very nice. You can tell her Mirka sent you. She is very helpful over the phone and has very affordable rates. Only minus is that there is a minimum 8 plates per order. 8.25 x 11.5” plates come out to be about $9-10 with shipping.

I also buy relief plates for my letterpress from www.boxcarpress.com, they also have a service where they will make a plate for you. All you have to do is send your digital image in.

How -to solar - or photopolymer plates:

Dan Weldens website

Australian site with nice pictures and info

information on how to prepare your digital files

instructions from Jewelery or relief point of view

About bookmaking

Supplies (prices 2/2010):

Dan Welden's Site 8x10 - $18

McClains 8x10 - $16.95

Takach Press 8x10 - $15

Dick Blick 8x10 - $11.95

Takach Press 8x11.5 - $10/$16

plate making service

NA Graphics plate making service

Recycling your plates:

Keep polymer out of landfills and out environment, after you are done with the plate, send them to Boxcar Press.

Books:

Printmaking in the Sun - Dan Welden over $100 on Amazon (out of print)

Printmaking with Photopolymerplates- Dianne Longley $45 with shipping

Photopolymer Demo tonight + busy week

Come out this week and smell the ink:

I will be doing a demo for the Pacific Gallery Artists tonight 7-9pm. It is also part of their monthly meeting, so come and network with local artists, see what's coming up and learn about polymerplates. What more can you ask from a tuesday night. I'll post helpful links before I leave today.

The meeting will the at the South Park Community Center, 4851 South Tacoma Way, Tacoma, 253-591-5299.

Wednesday I will be sitting at the La Familia Gallery in Seattle from 10am-5pm. Come and check out the new exhibition up or just come and hang out. I'd love to see you.

Thursday (Feb 11th) my solo show reception at Mad Hat Tea Company in Tacoma. 7-11pm. 1130 Commerce St. Tacoma, WA. I will be carting in my press and a new valentines-day linocut. Come and print your own valentines day card for your sweetie. And as if that wasn't enough, also happening at the reception "A Little Thing Called Love" - an evening of good vibes and aphrodisiacs in Tacoma... a sale and samples of chocolate, candles, massages, trinkets, jewelry and refreshments. How can you say no!

Also on the radar - two international shows coming up:

Solo show in Vantaa, Finland and a group show of La Familia Gallery artists in Nummela Finland. More on those as we progress.

New video up!

I finally had some time to squeeze in editing Karen Kunc's demo video. It is very long, and because there is so much to learn about her technique and process of working from sketches to finished print, I pretty much left it all in. You can go to youtube to check it out. It was taped at the Sev Shoon print center in Seattle this fall.

At the same time as Karen's demo was going Zha Sai, another visiting artist, was working on a relief print on the other side of the room. I was sorry to only catch on of the demos on video, even though both were brilliant artists. (Photo on the left taken by Janet Marcavage)

I am always interested to see how different printmakers register their prints. Karen used a larger block of wood that the paper could be registered on and run through the press- as you can see if you get a chance to look a the video. Zha Sai had a brand new apparatus that was so simple, yet, I had never seen one before. She registers her paper only on the top edge. I wish I would have had a regular camera with me to take a picture of her printer's helper, but since I don't have one, I'll try to sketch it out quickly for you. It is basically an L-shaped piece of plexiglass that she places over her print so that she can align her paper registration marks on the top of the page. So simple, but if you ever see her her, it must work well, since her prints were amazing.
If anyone else has a chance to try this out, let me know. I'd like to hear if it works as well as it looks it would.

It has been a super busy fall for me, hence the absence of me in the blogsphere. I have some test results from z-acryl plates, I wanted to post in the near future (tomorrow maybe?). I am renting a small studio space out to print in in Tacoma, and am teaching small classes in printmaking from there. Here is a short video of a day of printing from my beginning polymerplate class. You'll see it's a really small space, but if there are 3 or less people printing, we could make it. I am looking forwards to teaching more classes after January.

I also took a polymerplate + letterpress class in Seattle this fall and had blast learning about the vandercook presses. The class was taught at SVC by Chandler O'Leary. She added some pictures of work made in the class on her blog here. I put some pictures of the class on flickr with pictures of two small tabletop presses I am in the process of fixing up. The last parts are with a friend who is helping me out by welding a broken part and making a small chase for the Chicago #10 press. I am so excited to see them both put together and working again.

Upcoming in the new year are a portfolio and a solo show in February that I should be getting ready for. More to come on news and upcoming events in the next couple of posts.