April 13, 2023

Drawn live at North Fourth Art Center in Albuquerque:

PRINTMAKING

I brought in two new relief ink colors from Speedball -- Ultramarine blue and Diarylide Yellow -- which, in addition to Super Graphic Black, gave us three options to mix and match.  So we spent most of the session printmaking, rather than actually drawing:

New colors choices

opened a whole new Pandora's Box

Ellie brought in an old woodblock which we printed in orange and blue:

I bought a self-healing cutting mat at Walmart, which conveniently had a preprinted grid on it.  Ellie brought in a wood board, because the floor isn't always flat and easy to print on, when we print with our feet using a FEZIBO anti-fatigue rocking board:

Printing block

on top of a cutting mat

on top of a wooden board

NOTE:  I did not include a picture of Ellie printing with her feet, on the FEZIBO board, in this blog post.  However she noticed that if she kept her feet more towards the center of the board, the pressure did not go too much over the edge of the print and break the paper.  Also she printed on a thicker woodcut, which we could not do with the Tortilla Press.

There was another woodcut image on the back of Ellie's steer wood block.  The floor lines were really shallow, which disappeared when printing with her feet on the rocking board.  So she printed with an Iron Frog Glass baren and the shallow floor lines did not print.  Also she printed on two different kinds of paper -- Rives BFK Lightweight White and Masa:

Printed on

Rives BFK Lightweight White (left)

 and Masa (right)

• I almost always prefer the image printed on the yellower paper to the bright white Masa paper

Last week Ellie made these fish prints in color.  Then she altered them at home with colored pencils:

Laser Linocuts

I experimented with the laser cutter again at Quelab, opting to engrave my vest drawing from the previous Monday night drawing session, without any AI modifications.  I just downloaded the low resolution image from my blog, and uploaded it into the LightBurn software:

I laser engraved this drawing

without any AI modifications

into a 6x6 inch linoleum square

The LightBurn software apparently can be set up to distinguish dark lines from light lines -- by cutting the darker lines deeper, and the lighter lines shallower.  Therefore I opted for "Grey Scale" and set the Maximum power at 80, and the Minimum power to 30.  Usually I set both the Max and Min power to 80. The result wasn't pretty and the image barely showed up:

Speed 150

Maximum power: 80

Minimum power: 30

Nevertheless, this "Grey Scale" approach in Light Burn may be promising for intaglio.  If I can adjust the settings a little bit better I could laser engrave into acrylic and get a nice intaglio print, by starting with a drawn image of good line quality. 

As the first pass on the laser engraver was a bust, I set both the Max and Min power to 80 and laser engraved again:

The second laser engraving pass

with both the Maximum and Minimum power set to 80

Ellie inked my laser engraved linocut in blue and printed with her feet.  The saltiness in the background is most likely an artifact from the first failed laser engraved pass:

The salty background

is probably from the first failed laser engraved pass

I also laser engraved the fake AI figure from the previous Tuesday night drawing session, created in Leonardo.AI after many generations: 

I opted to laser engrave this AI figure

generated from drawings 

of the previous Tuesday Night drawing session

Likewise I failed with the first laser engraving pass, but successfully laser engraved the figure on the second pass.  This also resulted in a print with a salty background:

The inked orange plate looked good

However the orange print was too light and salty

Even laser engraving linocuts is turning out to require talent, all the way through the printing process.  

Maybe we need to try mokuhanga color printmaking -- as I mentioned in the 2022 blog post "Prints and Exhibition":

"Also printmaker Leon Loughridge was interviewed, where he discusses his color printing technique (mokuhanga?). His prints are in the school of Gustave Baumann."

THOUGHTS

It might be time to make an adjustment as the enthusiasm isn't there. While we expanded into color, no one is bringing any carved linoleum to the drawing sessions.   So perhaps we should have a separate print workshop, where we can concentrate and elaborate with color.

I am reluctant to advertise any "workshops" as I am not a printmaker like Tim Pauszek.  However I am a troublemaker, so I can bring all the print materials to a location (like I do for the Thursday night drawing session) and encourage artists to experiment and get busy.  I'm envisioning more of a print free-for-all -- maybe a BLOCK PARTY.  Artists can bring their carved blocks, say to the North Fourth Art Center on Satuday afternoon, and we can print them up.

• I managed to sign up again to Midjourney (April 13th) using a prepaid gift AMERICAN EXPRESSS card.  The prepaid VISA cards are not working (and I might have lost all my money with them).