ASU2. SNU I am in a bit of muddle now because some things physically follow each other but time wise do not. So the casting and visiting of churches to see representations of the stations of the cross overlapped with printmaking for both ASU2 and SNU and how to write that with out going all over the place i don't know. I guess this is why i've been asked to separate the two modules so that my markers are not having to untangle a mass of thread but have a clean line to look at. It is hard. 
It seems to make sense to follow the last images with the bronze cups but they didn't come till later as there was a wait, the investing and pouring. And during that wait. I printed some collagraph plates, that were really just doodles but came out quite nicely, for the Stations of the Cross ASU2 project. I had an idea that i wanted to make fourteen plates, at first i thought copper etchings, and then i decided to make them on old train tickets. In fact neither of these things happened as time ran out and covid19 hit. In the last week before lockdown i was able to cut to size (train ticket size) and cover with hard ground fourteen copper plates but i have not worked into them. I thought that i might make the train ticket collagraphs but my concentration was shot in the first few weeks of lockdown so i haven't had the time or mind space. Both these projects will happen but most likely not until next year perhaps in the run up to easter 2021. 
The prints that i made from the collagraph doodles were cut from chocolate bar card and printed on an off white paper with prussian blue ink using wet paper and dry paper one plate inked as relief and one as intaglio. Making these samples was preparation for printing the rail ticket collagraphs, how to ink and print and what images worked, and how to cut into the card to take some of the shiny surface off to create an image. Learning also that with printing you have to make the picture face the opposite way to the way that you want the print to be. This is a mind game. 
I also made plates of a photograph of myself at age 19. I had put in a proposal for one of the MA student-curator's exhibitions called self love and wanted to make a CMYK etching from this photograph to see how it differed from screen printing CMYK in look and process. I submitted a proposal which was about looking back at my teenage self with the kindness and love that was missing at the time. I wasn't sure i'd been accepted until i was invited to the artist's meeting. Unfortunately the curator decided my work did not fit with the vibe of her exhibition and messaged me to say so. I had had doubts too but was frustrated that she didn't look at the work before rejecting it. The rejection brought out a rather feisty side of me that was very much part of my teenage self's mode of protection. This feistiness also met with the Jesus story in quite a fun way. It allowed me to reconnect with a wanton rebelliousness that wasn't uncomfortable at all. 
The CMYK etchings involved going through the same process on photoshop as i'd gone though before with the screen print except that i only did half tone, as the comparison was not between two kinds of photoshop filters, but two kinds of print process. So then four plates were made and coated with photogravure ink and aquatinted and etched and then the  fun and games of setting up a jig and inking four plates simultaneously and printing them one after the other on the one piece of paper, held still by the press rollers, began. I made a set of all the colours combinations, my favourite being the magenta and yellow, as well three full prints in CMYK. I got good feedback from the print technicians which made my heart glow and felt nice for the teen me too. Going back in time I re-found parts of myself that had got buried and lost re-meeting teenage me, after years of mothering and other life had buried her deep, has given me access to parts of me cut off by responsibility and wanting to fit and be liked. 

SNU. Objects. 3d Printing. Sampling. 

SNU. ASU2. Masters Project MP. Cast origami lotus flowers in bronze and aluminium. Also wire horses not usable for 3d printing.  

SNU. Working with photographs was becoming a little intense. Feelings i had not anticipated had surfaced, and feelings i had thought i would be working with were turning out to be more raw and open than i'd expected. In truth i'd hoped the exercise would be a walk in the park, a sunny day in the garden, a trip along a country road, it began in that spirit but had taken me into dark places. 
I decided to side step into working with objects in the 3d workshops. I had four metal origami flowers that had been poured at the beginning of the term that were sample pieces, they were me trying recall how to make paper pieces for burn out, and how the different metals offered in the workshops worked  and handled, with a mind to needing this knowledge for my masters project in term three. The feathers i'd spent a morning putting on cups with sprue and risers had not been successful but these were good enough to use as learning props. 
I also wanted to find a way to make a copy of a tube of lino printing ink that had come out of my granny's art studio bag when she died. The graphics were cool so i didn't want to burn it out or ruin it with plaster or silicon so i asked Steve the technician if it could be printed on the 3d printer. I had asked the term before if  a couple of wire horses might be reproduced on this machine but they were too small and slight so i also had a yen to know what could and couldn't be 3d printed, again with a view to holding this knowledge for my masters project work should i need it. 
Steve took the paint tube, photographed it and put the photographs into the computer, confirmed that it was viable and so it was printed. Success. And following that success i took in a ceramic bull that had been part of my childhood, an ornament that belonged to the same period as the CMYK screen prints. All the time when working my mind is making these connections, seemingly unrelated things have lines drawn between them that outsiders can't see. The lines are live wires. They burn. The burn intensity depending on the level of attention given or the strength of the connection. The bull was photographed and processed by Steve as before. One of the interesting things about the 3d printer is that it doesn't just replicate, it is a modelling tool in itself and also things being replicated can be sized up and down. The plastic comes in various colours but the paint tube and bull by chance were printed in red. 

SNU. Once the plates were made i set out to try all the black inks on the print workshop shelves to see how they compared. My background is in textiles and before that i did some ceramics and testing and sampling are key to my creative process. Again it is hidden learning, knowing my materials allows me to make an informed choice about what i need to use to get the result i want. The inks that I used were strong black, bone black, graphite black, soft black, drypoint black and velvet black. Each handled a little differently, lay on the plate differently, and subtle differences of colour and tone could be seen on the prints. I'm not sure how clear this is in the photographs of the prints. Later i tried two Charbonnel sepias; warm sepia and raw sepia. I also printed these plates with extender on two different papers but the prints are too subtle to show in a photograph. My intention was to work into one of these prints with a view to learning about hand colouring prints but time has not allowed me to do this. Another advantage to making all these sample prints was that repeating the process over and over again means my body now holds that memory.