Print Workshop Vernon street

Print Workshop - Vernon Street

Our group had a print workshop at the Vernon street campus. We took part in 3 different workshops.

• Lino printing
• Letter press
• Mono printing

Lino Printing

 For the lino print workshop we used one of the letters we create for a previous studio brief. My letter represented  the word boom. I chose to do the letter V because i thought it would take an interesting lino print. I first used green chalk and pressed my letter onto a piece of lino to create a print. I then went over the trace in pencil , then in pen to make it easier to see.

 With lino what ever you cut out it will print the opposite , so i cut out the inside of the letter V , using a lino cutter . Cutting away and up pressing against a wooden block incase i was to slip.

I finally covered the lino in black ink back and forth a few times to make sure it was fully covered and placed it on to the centre of an A3 piece of paper i then put another piece of paper on top , a cloth and then i rolled it under the mechanical press and pushed down the large metal square to get my print. I repeated this process with the same lino to achieve a faded edition of my letter.

Letter press

For the letter press we could choose any word we wanted just so we could have a go of using wood block letters , We had to large boxes full of wooden letters and there was also a large wooden cabinet full of other size and shaped letters. I picked a selected of random letters and inked them up the same way as the lino. Once i printed them i found it didn't really look very good with a different letter R . So i picked similar letters and repeated the process.

If to much ink is applied to the letters it creates bubbles and they print on to the paper and  this makes some of the letters distorted.When finishing with the wooden blocks we used old rags and oil to wipe off the ink and then dry tissue paper and a soapy water spray. This resolves any ink been left on them for the next people to use them.

Mono Printing

Before creating my mono print i drew a shape onto some white card using a ruler and pencil and cut it out using a craft knife. I had to use card as i was about to put ink on to it and paper would of rolled up and not been strong enough to hold a lot of ink.

I used the same machine as when i did lino print , after inking my triangle with a roller , i placed it on to the paper , then put another piece of paper on top , a cloth and then i rolled it under the mechanical press and pushed down the large metal square to get my print. I repeated the process with another cut out shape of a triangle to get lots of different variations. Mono printing was my favourite.