We had a spontaneous printmaking party during the Quelab Open Hack on December 14, 2022.
And Robert Atkinson created a print masterpiece by simply drawing on a Styrofoam plate with a ball point pen:
Ready for framing!
Robert Atkinson printing at Quelab
Allie printmaking and inspiring us
Adam printed
"the Grinch that saved Christmas"
First Adam had laser engraved the Grinch on linoleum
using the laser cutter at Quelab
Adam printing with a Print Frog glass baren,
The Grinch printed on typing paper
STYROFOAM PLATES
Instant Karma!
Printmaking with Styrofoam plates delivered INSTANT KARMA...aka a "quick turnaround" (but not so quickt that we went back in time).
Cutting up Styrofoam plates
for quick-and-easy printmaking
The Styrofoam worked a lot better than I anticipated. Moreover it was both quick-and-easy to create and print:
Halley visited during Quelab Hack Night
and walked away with her
Styrofoam print masterpiece
My quick sketch in the Styrofoam plate
turning into a print
Adric showing off his
masterpiece print of a single dice
Adric's dice gouged drawing
on a Styrofoam plate
AI distraction:
Midjourney prompt: "a linocut print of a dice"
Adric's dice
reimagined with AI in Midjourney,
ready to be engraved on the lasercutter
and printed once again
Rebecca showing off her
Styrofoam relief print masterpiece
Inking with black water-soluble block printing ink
by Speedball
Printing by hand
Expanded PVC Foam plates
Brian with his print masterpiece
Brian pushed really hard with a ball point pen
to gouge the expanded PVC foam plate
Inking and printing
Brian's print came out very nicely,
perhaps because of the contrast between the uneven ink
and rigid lines
Allie also made this print
starting with a ball point pen on expanded PVC foam
I brought in a figure drawing
I previously made on expanded PVC foam
The results of my prints were not pretty
Gettin' Jiggy with It
Then we got bold and started experimenting, pushing the print, and Gettin' Jiggy with It:
The Jiggy Master Instigator himself,
Adam decided to add red mica pigment
to the black block printing ink
Mixing red mica pigment
with black water-soluble block printing ink
The linocut that Adam had
previously prepared on the laser cutter
While the final print did not look red,
it did seem to have an extra zing
that I attribute to the doping with red mica pigment
Rebecca sewed a design into a leathery pie shape piece of fabric, and inked it up. I believe this process is more kin to "Collagraphy," for the low relief (example):
The Ghost Print had more definition
but not really satisfying
I think that Rebecca's print would have been more successful using an intaglio printmaking process; perhaps on the Sizzix embossing press in the sewing room, using etching ink.
***
Adam created this Christmas tree print
by drawing into Styrofoam
Allie wrote backwards into Styrofoam
so that the words would print and read correctly
Taking it One Step(s) FURTHER
The quick-and-easy Styrofoam prints can serve as a spring board to make bigger and better things. The artist might key from them to make more sophisticated prints. Or we could scan in the designs, refine them, and cut them out in metal on the plasma cutter, or into large sheets of wood on the big CNC machine, both at Quelab.
We can print onto t-shirts with fabric ink, using the hacked Skateboard Press (which was Hecho en Quélab), and making linocuts with the hand held LaserPecker2:
Perhaps we can also transfer and bake prints onto ceramics somehow...
Maybe we can even make holograms from the Styrofoam prints.
Printmaking mess
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