March 5, 2024

We drew and printed at Sir Henry Morales' studio in Albuquerque:

PRINTS

Cassandra made a single celebrity cut on the BIG INK print:

Cassandra making a celebrity cut

The progress so far

on the BIG INK print

STAMPING FOAM

We transferred a linocut image into Stamping Foam again, like we did on June 22, 2023:

Linocut transferred into Stamping Foam

Virgil first heated up the Stamping Foam with the highest setting on our heat gun:

Virgil heating the stamping foam

with a heat gun

Then we pressed the linocut into the Stamping Foam until it cooled.  We got the best transfer when we actually stepped onto the "Linocut and Stamping Foam" sandwich (after putting a piece of wood on top):

This transferred worked well,

though the image was not clear to begin with

Then one just has to pat the Stamping Foam into some ink, and then press the inked Stamping Foam onto paper:

Henry inked the stamping foam with a roller, but that was probably too much ink:

Print and inked Stamping Foam

The first print

Thin sticky ink seems to work best.  I left the ink out for a day the last time we tried Stamping Foam, and that worked really well.

Also we need to think about the image.  Like linocuts, the best images probably have a fairly even distribution of black and white throughout the composition (unlike with the figure image above on our first try).  

Plus the linocut has to be a "negative" image, as that will transfer into a "positive" into the Stamping Foam.  The linocut image also has to be "flipped horizontally."

If done properly, the Stamping Foam will accept and print very fine textures from the linocut...and might even print better than using a press.