The main 3 things that we learnt about on our visit to the studio were copper photo etching, copper embossing and laser cut embossing.
I also used my time after the session had finished (around 12.30pm) to readjust myself with other print processes, where I prepared a screen for screen printing, and made and printed my own Lino print.
Copper plate embossing
When you are copper plate embossing the way in which you prepare/make your copper plate depends on what you want from your final product. Do you want your design to be raised or indented into the surface?
When creating your copper plate, whatever is etched away is what becomes raised.
Whatever part of the design you are wanting to take on the raised effect must be printed as a black positive - similar to a screen print. However unlike screen print, this must be printed onto acetate.
When preparing you image/design for the plate you do not need to flip so it is orientated backwards as you may assume. When the acetate is placed against the copper plate during exposure, it is placed ink side down, thus flipping the design.
If you are wanting to emboss using a laser cut plate, you must flip your design the opposite way around before cutting the plate.
If you dont want the indentation to show up round the edge of your design, as it does on the above piece, as it has been pressed to an A3 piece of paper, you must make sure that your copper plate is slightly larger than your stock for best results.
Many people may assume that a thicker stock is best to use with this process as the plate will have more material to press into, however thicker stock finds it hard to get into the grooves of the copper plate and so a thinner stock is preferred. I think that the above stock works well with the copper plate. Stock choice was Snowden white cartridge paper.
This process does not work with colour. You are unable to ink the plate as the metal is etched too deeply, the colour then sits in the corners of the metal etch. When the stock is pressed into the metal etch, it does no mould deeply enough to pick up the colour laying in the bottom of the etch.
Point size makes a big difference when preparing and making a metal etch. We were advised that the best point sizes to use for type were 12-14pt and up and any smaller would make text illegible.
Sans serif fonts are most successful to use and the chunkier the typeface the better the outcome will be.
Top tip: Make sure that when you are trying to emboss your stock, that the plate you are using to do so is thicker/ stronger than the material you are trying to print onto. Otherwise putting too much pressure on your laser cut/ copper plate when it is thinner than your stock will flatten your plate and you will loose your emboss.
Prepare your copper plate.
- Choose the side to work on with the least scratches as these could show up in your design.
Palm sand the side you are working on and then degrease and rinse with water.
If the water breaks into droplets on the plate you know there is still oil on the surface and need to do a further de-grease.
Make sure once you have degreased the plate that you do not touch the side you are working on as your hands can transfer oil.
Blot the plate dry with newsprint.
Take your copper plate to the roller press.
Take some light sensitive film, that is slightly larger than your plate to leave around an inch border around the edge.
The light sensitive film has 3 layers.
The top is a clear protective layer, the middle is the blue light sensitive layer and the bottom is a frosted layer.
Remove the frosted layer by peeling away. A good way to find the frosted layer, is when the film curls up, it is the inside layer.
Lay the film over the plate so that the blue layer is touching it.
DO NOT TOUCH THE PLATE. It will cause the film to anchor against the plate and it will not travel properly through the press.
Steadily turn the wheel of the press so that the film becomes crushed against the plate.
rotate 90 degrees and send it back through the press.
If it has been successful and you have not anchored the print or greased it, there will be very few if no air bubbles.
Cut around the plate to remove border of film.
put face down in a drawer to avoid light exposure.
Put the copper plate in the light box with image placed ink side down against film.
Set the vaccum to 9 units and press start.
Mix some sodium carbonate with water.
You will need 10g of sodium carbonate per litre.
Use hot water to disolve the substance (100ml approx) fill rest of litre with cold water. (Mix at 18 degrees approx)
you will need to mix 3 litres of mixture.
Remove the protective layer of film from ontop of the plate.
lay in sodium carbonate bath for approx 3 minutes, lightly sponge the surface of the plate every 30 seconds as the copper reveals. All copper is revealved when the negative space of the design has no grainy substance on the surface of the plate.
Rinse with cold water and blot completely dry.
Blast the plate in the light box for 80 light units to ensure post hardening and cover the back of the plate with tape.
Create a hook for the plate by taping a square piece of plastic to the back and hook it over the side of the bubbling solution box.
It must be placed in here for 3 hours, In this box the acid will eat away at the sections which were the black positive.
After it has sat in the solution for 3 hours flip the plate 180 degrees and put back into the solution for a further 3 hours.
Take out of the bubbling solution and put into corsine soda for 10 minutes.
The plate is now ready to use for embossing!
Place your plate on a hard surface (eg sheet of hard plastic)
Place your chosen stock on top.
Add packing such as newsprint to cushion the press.
Slide into the press.
Set the press to clamp the plate etc, and pull lever slowly for low pressure until it reaches approx 5000psi.
Release hydraulic nipping press and remove your now embossed work!
For laser cutting the best materials to try and use are:
Grey board.
Thin mdf such as 1ml.
Mount board is not a good material to use as it is too compact able.
The best stocks to try to print onto are thinner stocks and those with colour.
I then had a go at using the hydraulic nipping press using plates and laser cuts other people had already made.
Lino print.
Lino printing was also another print process I learnt how to do. I had done lino printing in the past and had come to no avail. I believe that this was probably due to the fact that I never really looked at it as a valuable print process. However until the end of the first year I began to show a lot of interest within print and due to the organic and rather unpredictable effect it produced I was keen to experiment with this process.
Lino prints produce imperfect, unpredictable and unique pieces of work. Lino cutting should not be used for work in which all prints are wanting to be line perfect and look the same. Due to using your hands to create the prints, they appear hand drawn, however they do show great character.
How I made my lino print:
The first thing that you need to do when Lino printing is choose the right sized piece. You will have to pay for a cut of Lino, and choosing the right sized piece means you wont be paying for more than you need.
The first thing that I do when creating a lino print is draw my design onto the lino and figure out which sections I want to have indented and what sections I would like to keep raised. Once I was confident with my design I began to look at tools.
Choose the right tools. There are a range of tools that you can use to cut into your tile to make different marks. Tools differ in width and depth as well as angle of cut.
Eg. it may be more efficient/appropriate to use a wider tool for larger areas that you would like to carve.
A big tip for creating a lino cut is to always concentrate whilst cutting. Whilst Lino cutting it is easy to make mistakes and take off more of the Lino tile than you were aiming for. Always cut away from your hands as well, if the tool slips whilst cutting towards your hands you could end up with nasty cuts.
Below is the design I created on the tile.
The type of ink you need to use for Lino printing is block printing ink.
In order to print my Lino tile I wanted to try a method which I had not used before, blending 2 colours of ink together in order to achieve a gradient effect.
To achieve this I poured approx 1 1/2 table spoons of blue ink onto a clean surface, and 1 1/2 of purple ink, I poured these onto the surface so that they were only just touching each other.
It is important to choose a roller that is big enough to cover the area of your Lino tile, without having to move it to the right or left.
I then lightly dipped my roller into the ink, making sure I got an equal amount of each colour on the surface of the roller.
I rolled the ink out onto the bench, moving the roller slightly to the right every 5 swipes in order to get the colour to blend.
You know that the ink is ready to use once the sticky sound it made when you first started rolling it has disappeared and replaced by a quiet hissing noise.
I then inked up my tile, It is important, especially with gradient printing that you swipe only in the same direction (so you are not removing any of the ink once you have put it onto the tile) and that you don't move your roller to the left or right between swipes to avoid mixing up the gradient colours.
Once my tile was inked up I took it to the rolling press. Here, I placed my chosen stock (Snowden white cartridge paper) onto the press surface, followed by my tile, carefully placing it ink side down to avoid smudging. I then added newsprint for packing and closed the press.
something that I learnt when doing lino printing is that it is important to use the right amount of packing, too much packing and the press may be too stiff and your print may not come out as dense in colour.
I repeated the same colour sequence again, using red and yellow inks in order to create another gradient.
Below are the results of my Lino printing.
I also tried to tape out the background of my tile to see if more 'Line perfect' illustrations could be produced.
Some of the background (negative space) was still apparent within the print. I felt that taping these sections out took away the character, and why many people choose to do a Lino print... for the unpredictable outcomes.
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