Print-Making

At the beginning of June I started attending an 8 week Print-Making Workshop at the Te Kowhai Print Trust on a Tuesday from 9:30 am to 2 pm. My enthusiasm quickly gave way to anxiety on the first day though and I almost left before the session began! After a bit of a chat (and cry) with Jasmine, who works at Te Kowhai, I managed to persuade myself to stay...and I'm so glad I did. I've learnt a lot in the 3 weeks it's been running. Here's some photos of what I've been doing. The first session was on Dry Point Print Making. I've never done it before so was very unsure of what I was doing. I did enjoy the process of scratching on the piece of  clear plastic (perspex??) though and look forward to having another go at this technique in the future. I chose to take a dry point print of an image I'd drawn of my cat's eye....

 My first print was very "clean" (I was quite particular lol!)

 ...but then I risked dirtying it up a bit...

 ...then adding some more cross hatching but at this point I wasn't liking it anymore

 The tutor, Hamish suggested adding a colour which I like but I didn't use a fat enough roller, so there's a variation in ink in the second rotation.

The second and third week was focusing on Woodcuts. I felt a bit more confident doing these though had to stop comparing myself with some of the other people who were doing really intricate images.

 I really pleased to say that I've finally understand how to do a two-colour image!

 Some prints pulled from my first woodcut. 

The following week we were shown how to register our prints so after cutting out the second block (which would give colour to the background around the leaves) I printed the block but unfortunately my registration wasn't very good. 

What I'm really proud of, was my acceptance of the

 outcome and my enjoyment of the process.

 Playing around with some different coloured printing inks. 

Now that I understand how to do a two-colour print I'm going

 to work on a second woodcut of the my "fingerprint"

 My next challenge will be doing a multi-coloured print.

Looking forward to next weeks workshop..we're 

going to do screen-printing.

Printmaking; 15 hours