Snow College Printmaking Workshop

This past week I was able to go back to Snow College where I studied art for 3 years and take a week long printmaking workshop taught by Stefanie Dykes. She was an amazing person to meet and work with! I learned a lot, got a lot of feedback and received a lot of printmaking references and names of working printmakers.

Stefanie is the co-founder of Saltgrass Printmakers in Salt Lake Utah, which is a studio where people can come into and use the presses for their work, take classes and participate in workshops. Her link to Saltgrass is www.SaltgrassPrintmakers.org

During the course of the week we worked on a number of prints. One of the neat things she showed us this week was a simple way to keep a multi-color print registered perfectly. She called this method of registration the "Kento" registration method. From what you can see in the photo, I have a tan board with my print in the center and a strip of white running along the upper edge of the board. 

How we created these was we took a larger Masonite board, Its smooth on the front side and has a rough texture on the back. Flipping the Masonite to the back side we took 2 strips of matte board and glued them to the board with rubber cement. These two strips are for the corner of your paper so you can lay your paper down in the exact place every time. From the edge of the 2 strips of matte board we measured out 1 1/2 Inches from the top and from the side. This space is for the margin so that we have equal space around the print. Mark it and that's where you will put the edge of  print material like Sintra, Linoleum, or wood. Glue the printing material with rubber cement to the Masonite. After both the Linoleum and matte board are glued to the Masonite we coated the whole thing (minus the linoleum) with an acrylic gel medium so that when you're inking up your image, if you get ink on your board you can wipe it off easily so the ink doesn't get on your paper.

Here i'm inking my plate with my 3rd color. The registration is really really simple and pretty difficult to mess up. You just lay the corner of the paper in the corner of the matte board every time and the image should be in the exact place!

Here is my print after the 2nd color. 

 Here is my finished print. Just an non-objected print I did to explore shape, line and color. This is a 4 color print and the registration was really easy on this. Doing other multi-color prints with other various registration methods, this is the method I now prefer.

Hanna's First Lino Print!

Another thing fun and exciting was happening this week; my 12 year old sister-in-law came for a visit and stayed with us for a week. While she was here, my wife and I went to the studio to get work done. It wasn't long before Hanna didn't know what to do and was board. I had some extra linoleum laying around and asked her if she wanted to work on a few prints to keep her occupied. She agreed and then set out to create her very first lino print.

After a while she had her image drawn on her linoleum and carved it out with my old Speedball gouges. Here she is inking her linoleum up for the first time. 

Rolling it through the press.... And....

Bam! Her first lino print!! "You so totally rock Squirt!!" -Crush, Finding Nemo.

Dude, this is an awesome first print! Nicely done Hanna!! "Give me some fin, noggin, dude." 

Progress on 8' x 4' print

Since being hired on Home Depot's freight night crew I feel like a slacker because some days I just dont feel motivated to come into the studio and print. I like my job and am grateful to have it because my bills couldn't be paid otherwise, but at the same time its difficult to work when I would rather be in the studio printing, doing what I love.

So after many weeks of not posting anything on my blog I finely have something to update! Sorry for the long wait...

Slowly I've been working on my 8' x 4' print. A print this size is more work then I originally thought, and has taken more time then I planned. Which shouldn't have surprised me because the first of art is: "Art always takes longer then you plan." Need I say more.

As I was getting ready to write this post, I looked for some pictures I took some time ago showing more of my process and how I prepared my sintra for printing, but I must have misplaced them.... So anyway. After I drew my image on the sintra with a sharpie marker, I took acrylic paint and painted the whole surface.

I paint it a color that isn't very distracting but dark enough that when I step back and squint my eyes I can get a feel for what the print will look like if I were to pull a test proof right then. Yet the paint is also light enough that I can still see the sharpie. The primary reason I do this is so that there is the contrast between what i've printed already and what I haven't. So I really like painting my matrix before I carve. If any of you were to try this let me give you a heads up; its easier to draw the image with sharpie first before you paint because i've found that the sharpie has a more difficult time going on top of the paint, it almost feels like the paint dries out the marker a little bit. So I like to get a good drawing done first before I paint it to make it easier on myself. Just a heads up. 

So now i've started to carve! I'm really excited to see it begin to take shape. Because of my schedule I haven't been able to dedicate as much time as I would like to on this piece, but 'slowly but surely' right? 

Here the first figure is carved and so is the heart and jar. 

I then worked on the trunk of the tree and the second figure. Eventually I began working on the back ground. It was a lot of straight lines..... 

It was a good day, this day I made some serious headway in my print! I love days like this! 

And this is where I am currently! I've come a long way in the past few weeks but still have a long way to go.