Category: Etching

Two cranes

These two cranes are at Chatham Dockyard.

Two cranes – etchings
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They stand by the river, ready for work. They are old cranes. It’s a long time since they lifted loads. But they hold themselves ready, should the call come. While they wait, they talk to each other.

So I put them on the same sheet, they go together through the etching press.

Copper plates
Printing press
Plates on the press (print #2)
print #5 drying

I made five prints of these cranes. The colour is added using the “chine colle” technique.

“Chine collé” means putting paper on top of the plate before it goes into the press. I have written about it on this page.

Here is the paper on top of the plate. It has glue on the top surface. The paper is very lightweight Japanese paper. It’s quite hard to get it to stay in position.

Here is a video of this plate after it’s been through the press:

Printing “Two Cranes”: thanks to friends at East London Printmakers for helping me with the video

I etched the plates and made these prints at East London Printmakers, Stepney. The techniques for making the plates are hard ground, soft ground, aquatint and dry point. The ink is Intaglio Printmakers Shop Mix Bone Black.

The cranes are at The Historic Dockyard, Chatham, Kent ME4 4TE

Let me know if you’d like a “Two Cranes” print? The sheet is about A2 size.

Absinthe Table: chine collé prints

I made a new series of six prints of The Absinthe Table.

Print 1: single plate, black ink

I used black ink and green ink.

The ink is Intaglio Printmaker etching ink: Bone Black Shop Mix, and Light Green. Print 3 is made from two etched copper plates: first I printed the background pattern using green ink, then I printed the bottles and table, using black ink on another plate.

Then I made some more prints adding chine collé. Here are prints 5 and 6.

Chine collé is thin paper. I put it on the plate before the print roller goes over. The heavy rollers squeeze the coloured paper onto the picture, giving the yellow rectangles on the images of prints 5 and 6. The yellow rectangles give a sense of depth – maybe you are looking at these bottles through a window. Or maybe there is a window above casting a sunlit patch.

Prints 5 and 6 are made using two plates and chine collé. The process is lengthy and fraught with potential error:

  • put the glue on the yellow chine collé paper. Let it dry.
  • ink the green plate, the background
  • ink the black plate, the foreground. (don’t get them the wrong way round)
  • put the green plate on the press, inked side up (not inked side down)
  • put the white paper on top of it (don’t get ink smudges on the white paper)
  • roll the press across the plate, and keep the end of the paper under the roller so it doesn’t move while you….
  • …remove the green plate, and replace it with the black plate (get it oriented exactly where the green plate was, and the right way up, and the right way round)
  • put the glued chine collé paper on the black plate, glue side up (it is very lightweight and drifts about when someone walks past)
  • let the white print paper fall on top (as it falls it wants to dislodge the layers underneath)
  • roll the print press
  • remove the finished print ( examine – did it work?)

The chine collé technique is described on this page of my website.

It is also possible to use the chine collé to provide a background for the whole image. Here is print 4. This is made using chine collé and one plate.

All these prints are made using heavyweight Fabriano Unica printing paper. It can be folded in half to make an A5 card to send to the absinthe enthusiast or wine drinker in your life. Or you can cut it down and frame it to make a small picture for your kitchen. The image itself is about postcard size: 10cm x 15cm. Let me know if you would like one? £25 + postage.

Here is a gallery of all six prints from this second series. These are all handmade prints from the etching press – not digital prints. I’ve numbered the prints in this post for easy reference. The numbers do not appear on the print you will receive. I can sign them if you like or not if you prefer them blank.

Here’s the copper plate I used for the black foreground:

Two boys

Here’s a print I made at East London Printmakers last week.

Two boys, etching, image size about 5inches by 3inches

I wanted to show how concentrated these people were, immersed in what they were doing, sitting on the wall.

It is printed on Fabriano Unica paper, using Charbonnel F66 traditional etching ink. Here is the copper plate:

The plate is made with hard ground lines, soft ground patterns, and three aquatint sessions.

I made some variations of this print. Here is one, using chine-collé.

Two boys, warm brown chine-collé

Sometimes in the printing process, magic happens. As I was packing for this print session, searching for paper, tissues, gloves, and other printing essentials, I encountered a thick envelope labelled “Old Prints”. I pulled out one of those, a street scene, with a vague idea of overprinting it. It is a drypoint I made years ago. The vague idea turned into a plan, and then a print. Here it is. I was really pleased with how it came out. The chine-collé is also a leftover from another project.

Two boys and street, combined image size about A5. Etching, drypoint and chine-collé.

St Bartholomew the Less – etchings (2)

Here is an etching for the City Music Foundation.IMG_0305

Here are photos of work in progress and some more prints:

Print on Khadi paper
Print on JP Green paper from Vintage Paper Company
Print on yellow Khadi paper
Print for greetings card on Fabriano Unica paper
Print on Khadi paper
Print on Khadi Paper
The music
Pages of the music
Music on top of the plate, ready to print
Now put the printing paper on top of the music, cover with tracing paper and blankets, and roll the press.
The print and the copper plate

See this post for earlier sessions on this project: St Bartholomew the Less – etchings(1)

 

Strange Landscapes from Wood (2)

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Here’s a print I made at East London Printmakers yesterday.

It’s a continuation of the project “Strange Landscapes from Wood”, which I started in November 2018, before work for the exhibition and New Year Cards took over.

This print shows a dialogue, or perhaps an exploration. Are they perhaps looking down a tunnel? Or watching a sunset?

This is a chine collé print from a copper etched plate. The paper is thin Japanese paper brought to me by kind friends directly from “Paper Nao” in Tokyo. You can see how the plate was made on this link: Strange landscapes from wood

The plain print, with no chine collé, looks like this:

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The coloured bits are placed on top of the plate, glue side up. I’ve described the process on this link: The chine collé process

Here is work in progress:

Ink: Gutenberg black from Intaglio Printmaker.
Glue the little bits of paper on the *top*. Note the tweezers.
The coloured paper is “fibre silk” paper from “GreatArt.com”
I lift it with tweezers and put it to dry on another piece of newsprint. When dry, I move it carefully to the plate: glue side UP.

St Bartholomew the Less – etchings (1)

This morning I made an etching based on a sketch of St Bartholomew the Less.

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Here’s the original sketch, which was made from the top of Maggie’s Centre in St Bartholomew’s hospital, by kind permission of the staff of the Centre.

The sketch was to explore the proportions, before making the more detailed watercolour drawings on this post:

St Bartholomew the Less

I thought the sketch was rather lively and might make a good etching. Here’s the copper plate I made:
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And here are some of today’s prints: (click to enlarge)

The plate needs a bit more work I think. The background could be darker and perhaps some shading on the tower itself. My idea is that I will print it with perhaps chine-collé. So I want to keep the design simple.

I just had the morning at the print studio today.

The paper is Chinese paper from Great Art. Numbers 11369 (soft), and 11565 (white, with a slight grid). The ink is Intaglio Printmaker Shop Mix Bone Black. The plate is 10cmx15cm copper plate from Great Art, which I prepared with hard ground 28 June 2018. I used the Rochard press at East London Printmakers.

Update:

14 March 2019 – Chine Collé

 

Strange landscapes from wood (1)

On a recent walk in Hoxton, I picked up a piece of wood. Perhaps it was part of a crate. It had interesting grain.

John cut it into smaller pieces with a saw.

Wood pieces

I was going to use them as relief blocks. Then I got talking to a fellow printer at East London Printmakers. She suggested I press them into soft ground and make an etching plate. Then I thought I’d use the Albion press to get sufficient pressure.

The technician, Dan, asked if I had aquatint on there, and I hadn’t. Can you put aquatint on top of soft ground? We went off to consult the studio co-ordinator. She said yes, aquatint was good idea.

So here’s the process:

  1. Prepare plate with soft ground
  2. Press wood into soft ground using the Albion Press. This makes an impression with darker places where the wood was.
  3. Put aquatint (dust) onto the plate, and fuse it with the gas burner. The soft ground burns and goes brown. The aquatint fuses onto the plate in the darker places. 
  4. Etch in acid, Edinburgh etch, for two minutes. 
  5. Clean off the plate and print.The aquatinted areas are dark.

Here’s the result.

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Wood block into soft ground. Printed from copper plate. “Strange landscapes”, on drying rack. Prussian blue ink on Vintage Paper Co paper.

Here’s the other block, with chine collé stripes added. I’m not sure which way up it should be. IMG_0696 Since this whole session was experimental, I also used some experimental paper from the Vintage Paper Company. They say on the package: “This was made some time between 1969 and 1973 as waterleaf (unsized) printing paper by J Green and Sons (brilliant but now extinct British papermakers). I had it gelatine sized in December 2017 by Two Rivers Paper (brilliant and very much alive and kicking British papermakers” and they ask for feedback. I think it worked really well, and I’m now off to write them an email.

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March 2019: I used this plate to make some chine collé prints. See this link:/strange-landscapes-from-wood-2/

Towers East and Towers West – multiple prints

My idea was to produce multiple copies of “Towers East” and “Towers West”. These are aquatint plates I prepared a few months ago.  This post describes the process to produce the plates: Towers East and Towers West

The Towers are St Mary’s Tower and Peabody Tower, just to the North of the Barbican.

I made 14 reasonable prints, and 2 out-takes. I glued the out-takes into my notebook. I make one page per print session, and record what I did, what paper and ink I used, what worked and what didn’t. This is in an attempt to learn and improve my printing technique.

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Here are the 14 reasonable prints, numbered 1 to 14. Numbers 1-13 are on card 20cm by 30cm. This card size is intended as a greeting card. When folded it fits neatly into an A5 envelope. Number 14 is on larger paper. All are for sale,  £5 each plus postage. Please contact me by email via the contacts page, or leave a comment on this page. The red writing is on the online image here, not on the print.

Click on an image to enlarge it. It may take a little while to load.

The technique is “chine-collé” which is described here: The chine collé process

Here’s number 13 so you can see the format:

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Here is number 14 on the larger paper:

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These are all part of my “Towers Project” leading to an exhibition in the Barbican Library February 2019.

I work in the print studio at East London Printmakers. Prints are on Fabriano Unica Paper, using Intaglio Printmaker Bone Black ink. They are printed by hand on the Henderson press. Each print takes about half an hour to print.

The Atlas Building – prints

This week I made prints of an etching of the Atlas Building. The etchings are based on a sketch I made.

I made 12 prints. Here they are.

#1 Plain print
#2 FT crane
#3 FT crane
#4 FT sidelines
#5 FT sidelines
#6 FT sidelines
#7 FT sidelines
#8 FT sidelines
#9 FT sidelines
#10 Japanese Gampi
#11 Japanese Gampi
#12 Japanese Gampi

They are all for sale! Please let me know if you would like to buy one. All are printed on etching paper “Fabriano Unica”. They are intended to be used as greetings cards. So the print is to the side like this:

Version 2

They fold in half to make a greeting card which fits in a C5 envelope.

Folded to make A5 card
Folded to make A5 card
Fits in C5 envelope
Fits in C5 envelope

Equally they can be folded in half or cut, and put in a frame size A5.

If you’d like to buy one, please contact me, and say which one you’d like. They are numbered – click the images in the gallery above. £5 each + postage. These are handmade items by me, an amateur printer. Thumb marks, imperfections, ink smudges and other defects reflect the handmade nature of the items and, as they say, “should not be regarded as defects”.

This is all preparation for my “Towers” exhibition in February 2019.

The process I use is “chine collé”. Here are some photos of work in progress:

Squeeze the ink onto the glass
Putting the ink on
Plate in process of wiping
Plate wiped off and ready to print
Glue papers on the top side
Put papers on the plate
Assembly on the print bed
Use gloves to protect the paper and the wheel from inky fingers
Yes, it stuck

To see more detail on the process,  look at this page, which explains all the stages.

The photos above are in “East London Printmakers” in Stepney, where I do my work.

Here is the original sketch on which the prints are based.

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Atlas Building

The Atlas Building – print

Today I worked on a print of the Atlas Building. This is based on a watercolour I did in March this year in a peregrination around City Road.

Here the hard ground print:

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Then aquatint:

 

IMG_4354 (1)This was an aquatint with 6 tones, which is about the maximum I can achieve. On the 4th and 5th dip it’s difficult to see what I’m doing.

These pictures are postcard-size, with the intention of making cards.

IMG_4355 (1)Here’s the test plate print.

I’m in the question about whether the aquatint needs more work. I thought it did when I first saw it, but now I’m not so sure. It isn’t as dark as the photo looks. Comments welcome.

Aquatint and test plate on Khadi handmade paper. Hard ground print on handmade paper from Paperchase. Printing done at East London Printmakers. Ink is Intaglio Printmaker “Shop Mix Bone Black” from a tube. Etching on 10cm x 15cm copper plate using Edinburgh Etch.

Here are the copper plates:

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