Nosey

 

This is my latest linocut, printed on Hosho Select washi in Flint water-based ink.

I ran the brayer down the edges of the plate just to give the image a visual boundary. 

Paint Tube Squeezer Thingamajig

 

I don't know what the formal name for this thing is, but it's used to squeeze ink or paint out of a tube by squooshing it between the ribbed rollers by means of the key to the side.

This is a very cheap version of the device, and if you really feel like it you can spend quite a bit of cash to get a somewhat better engineered version which does pretty much exactly the same thing.

I prefer to decant my printing ink from its tubes into small screw-topped pots so I can get at it with palette knives. It's more convenient, and also generally less messy.

However, those steel grips are not very comfortable to use. Not very comfortable at all. So I added some grips to make them easier to squeeze.

Oak grips

3d printed grips

I did it in two ways.

I made a pair of grips from a small piece of oak. It took about ten minutes.

I designed a pair of grips in Blender and 3d printed them on my Ender 3. All up, that took about two hours.

The 3d-printed grips are more geometrically exact, but that's about their only benefit over the wooden ones.

Sometimes the high-tech solution isn't the best one.

Dali Deco Woman

 

Here's another test print for a linocut.

This one is based on a bronze by Salvador Dali called Art Deco Woman. I don't know how big the original was.

The print is 95 x 245 mm.

It needs more work. I'm happy enough with the key block, but the ochre overlay is fairly imprecisely registered, and I'm going to have to open out some of the specular highlights to make them more definite.

It doesn't help that my yellow ochre ink has separated a bit in the tube, so it makes a very liquid film when rolled out that tends to fill in any fine lines.

Apart from that, it's okay I think.

Later on...

I decanted the yellow ochre ink into a little plastic jar and stirred the bejeezus out of it before rolling it out.

Then I printed the ochre block first, and the black second. It gave me a much cleaner, richer print.

I'm not enthralled with the blue overlay on the DALI text. In fact I might just cut the text off the block completely. I will cogitate on the matter.

Hwahong Gouges

 

I recently found these tiny woodcut/linocut gouges by a Korean company called Hwahong. I got them from Gordon Harris in Christchurch. They're not the cheapest gouges available, but they are far from being the most expensive: they cost about $14 each.

The steel is good, and the blades are long enough that the handles don't interfere with the cutting, but not so long as to be uncontrollable.

I have to wear high-magnification spectacles when sharpening them, because the blades are so small that they're difficult to see for those such as I with decrepit ocular organs. On a related note, I've had to paint coloured blobs on the ends of the handles so that I can easily distinguish them from each other.

The red blob is a very small V-gouge, the blue is a slightly larger V, and the green is a tiny U.

I realised after taking this photo that I should have turned them the other way up. First, because the maker's mark is on the other side, but also to show where I've carved away a pad for my forefinger to rest on while I'm cutting. It's not absolutely necessary, but it does give me immediate tactile feedback on the orientation of the blade.

Laughing Man

 

My first proper marmoleum print, and I think I can safely say that I love this stuff. It allows for fine lines and stippling that I haven't been able to achieve in any other relief medium.

The image area is 97 x 134 mm. Ink is Flint water-based relief ink, and the paper is a hot-press Fabriano, though I don't know specifically which variety — it's about 350gsm I think.

Marmoleum

 

Thanks to my friend Jeremy, I now have a stack of Marmoleum blocks to make prints from. I've been trying to lay my hands on some offcuts for ages, to try it out, but could only find people who would sell it to me off the roll for an arm and a leg.

I've cut down the piece that he gave me into nine each of A3-ish and A5-ish, about 20 at A4, and a miscellany of odd sizes cut off the edges. That will keep me going for a while.

Marmoleum is a brand name for a commercial linoleum flooring, but it's harder and more robust than the lino available at retail for printmaking. Chris Pig speculates that it might have marble dust in the mix because of the name.

It is fairly expensive as flooring — when I sourced it off the roll, they quoted me about $165 per linear metre, with a minimum of two metres plus $65 to ship it down to me in Christchurch. Let's call it $400-ish for a batch. However, the pile in this photo is less than a metre off the roll, and the nine A3 blocks alone would cost me near enough to $500 from the arts supply shops in town. So, if you have the cash up front, or can put together a consortium to spread the cost, it works out much, much cheaper than buying so-called printmakers' lino. And it's much better.

I did a very quick little block, just to see how it cuts and prints, and it cuts like a dream.

It is a lot stiffer and more robust than the printmakers' lino, but it has a smooth, creamy texture, and cuts very easily and smoothly.

It will still break off small unsupported bits if you attack it too vigorously, so you do still need to take reasonable care with cutting fine detail.

I have not yet tried cutting very fine detail with a knife; that's still in the future. However, I have seen Chris Pig working the surface of a marmoleum block with a wood-engraving multiple tool, which indicates to me that it will take very fine detail.

It prints well too, though the blocks do require a bit of preparation before you start using them (see below).

This test print is a bit blotchy, but to be fair I wasn't taking quite the care I should have about inking up, paper quality, felt quality, and all the other bajillion variables that go into making a relief print.

Plus, making a virtue of necessity, I quite like the unevenness of the ink coverage, as long as it's not too egregious. If I want perfectly smooth fields of colour, there are better sorts of printmaking for that end. Screen printing, for example.

This image should display on your screen at about 100% of the print size, but of course that will depend on your own screen resolution.

The surface accepts the ink pretty well. This is just Flint water-based ink, so nothing very special. I don't have any oil-based inks, as I don't really have the facilities for easy clean-up, so I don't know how it reacts with them. I suspect they'd be better.

Block Preparation

Block preparation is very straightforward.

Like any lino, Marmoleum straight off the roll has a slightly uneven, polished texture to its surface, and that needs to be removed or else it will print a whole lot of white speckles. It flattens out very quickly and easily with a wet-&-dry sponge block, used wet. I have two of them, a reasonably fine "all-purpose" sanding block, and a fine finishing block, but the fine block isn't really necessary for this. Sand the surface until you've raised a decent slurry, and be sure to cover every inch of the surface.

One caveat: the back of the marmoleum is reinforced with an open-weave jute or hessian mesh, and if it gets wet, it shrinks and deforms the block. It pays, therefore, to keep the back dry as much as possible while scrubbing down the top surface.

I sanded down the feather block (above) against the side of our laundry hand basin, so that any water fell away and into the sink rather than creeping around behind the marmoleum. That seemed to work pretty well, but I was also being a bit careful to limit the amount of water I was using — just enough to keep the surface liquid.

Possibly you could seal the back with shellac or an oil- or spirit-based polyurethane before sanding; I haven't tried that yet.

After sanding, wipe the surface down clean, removing as much of the sanding slurry as you can, and then degrease the surface by wiping it down with liberal amounts of meths.

Once the surface was flattened, I painted it with a diluted black acrylic ink. This darkens it, and makes it much easier to see where you've cut into the surface. It doesn't need to be very dark, just darker than the natural colour of the marmoleum. In fact if it is too dark, it will make it more difficult to transfer an image on to the block for cutting. You'll just have to experiment to get the ideal dilution.

Once all this is done, you're ready to get an image on to the block by any of the usual methods (spirit or graphite transfer, gridding etc.) and start cutting.

It cuts easily enough that you could use those awful red-handled linocutting gouges with the interchangeable blades they use in schools, but honestly, get yourself some decent gouges. You won't regret it.

Later...

This is a state print, taken part way through the cutting process to give me an accurate idea of how the cutting is going, and where I might need to cut more.

Unfortunately there's not a lot I can do about the areas where I should have cut less.

The ink has reactivated the marker I used to draw the grid and sketch in the image, and the pressure of the press has transferred it along with the ink. Hopefully, when the ink dries on the block, it will seal it and prevent this happening again.

Etching Press Lockdowns

 

Until now, I've just secured my little etching press to its trolley with a pair of G-clamps. They worked fine, but they were ugly and intrusive.

I'd always intended to replace those with something a bit less ad-hoc, and today I finally got around to that. I turned a couple of knobs from a scrap of pink birch, set a nut in each, and put a couple of M8 bolts up through the trolley top and press carriage to secure everything.

The new shiny knobs are indicated in the photo by the big red arrows.

I'm pretty sure that just the two bolts will be quite adequate to keep everything in place, but I can always add more if need be.

Press Issue

 

My nipping press has a slight hollow in the middle of the plate, so that it doesn't print properly in that area. It's a very common issue with presses of this type, which aren't strictly speaking designed for printing. It's a persistent irritation.

I've been trying to figure out how to fix the problem. I thought at first a shaped caul might do the trick, but a wooden caul would very soon be dented by the pressure on the plates, which would lead to worse printing issues. Maybe a couple of progressively smaller thin felts might help.

Or, and this is the most likely reliable fix, I might just have to rub in that area with a burnisher before the paper comes off the block.

Pfeil Gouge Rack

 

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6134612

I designed and printed a rotating turntable holder for my Pfeil palm gouges for lino and wood cutting. It holds up to nine gouges, and when assembled it stands about 170mm tall.

It requires a 22mm skateboard bearing for the turntable, and I added a couple of disks of baking paper under the cap to provide a low-friction surface.

I'll probably turn a wooden base for it to stand on at some point.

2023-07-26

I turned a base for the turntable from an old lump of rimu.

It's a raggedy, split bit of wood, and not a great piece of wood turning, but it will do the job.

I've also put the gouge number and profile on the top of the wooden mushroom, so that I can distinguish between them at a glance. It's not difficult to tell them apart by the blade when they're of a decent size, but the teensier tinier gouges all look quite similar to my tired old eyes.

2023-08-02

I made another one.

It's fundamentally the same as the first, just different in detail (and colour).

I included some countersunk holes around the bottom this time, so that it could be screwed to its wooden base instead of being glued.

Print Drying Rack

 

I got sick of having fresh prints lying around all over the place, so I whipped up a drying rack for myself at long last.

It's just some lengths of 3mm MDF glued into angled slots in a couple of battens, and the battens glued to a bit of 9mm MDF. I put a couple of hooks on it to hang it, as shown here, or else I can use it down flat, with the prints resting on edge. The hanging version is more convenient, as it keeps the drying prints up and out of the way.

This rack will cater to up to sixteen prints, which should be plenty. I seldom do more than eight or ten at a time. It handles A4-ish paper fine, and should be able to support larger sheets as well, though that would depend on the weight of the paper. Anything more than about A3 would probably tend to droop at the ends, I would think.

Land of the Blind — Colour Test

 

I've completed my first run of colour tests for this print. It's six blocks (or seven if you count the one that was printed in two colours). The key block is EssDee Soft lino, all the others are 3mm MDF.

I don't know what this paper is; it's a scrap I fished out of a pile of scraps. It feels like about 240gsm or thereabouts, and I think it might be a hot-press  watercolour paper.

There's a tiny bit of cutting left to do, and then I think it's about done and ready for a proper print run.

Brayer Rack

 

I have half a dozen Speedball 3-inch brayers, in varying stages of abuse and degradation, and up until now they've just been knocking around wherever they might come to rest. I like the consistency of the Speedball brayers, though in truth the little 3-inch ones are really too small for most work, and the diameter of the roller will only give you a roll-out of about 90-95 mm.

It's not good for them to be left with anything pressing against the rubber of the roller; you can end up with dents and flat spots that may never come out again.

So today I've cobbled together a stand for them out of bits and pieces of plywood. It'll do the job, and eventually I'll probably get around to making a box to put it in.

 

Ouroboros Centipede

This is a state proof of a little woodcut, only 60x120 mm, cut into a fragment of MDF.

I was originally planning to cut away the background, but now, having seen it sitting in its black block, I'm not so sure about that.

Testing, Testing

 

I took a few impressions from a linocut I carved a few years ago, printed with the nipping press I got today from Bob.

Apart from the one on a page from the phone book, they're all just on A5 copy paper, about 90gsm I think. The ink is Flint water-based relief ink. Printing went very, very easily with the plate on a 3mm grey-board baseboard, the paper over that, and a very thin felt over all. It's a lot quicker and easier to manipulate than the roller press, and MUCH easier than printing with a baren. The longest part of each print, as always, is rolling ink on to the plate.

I think the ink impression is less even than that I get from the roller press, but that might be down to the rolling-up. I don't mind a bit of irregularity in any case, as long as it's not too extreme; it adds a bit of character to the surface.

The image is 105 x 145 mm, so fairly small. There's room in the press for a bit over A4, but the inverse square law means that an increase in the area being squished requires increasingly more pressure to achieve the same results. I'll try a larger print, but my suspicion is that the largest practicable print size will be smaller than A4. We shall see.

Next Day

I did some multi-colour tests today, one lot on dampened 300gsm watercolour paper (left), and the other on the same 90gsm copy paper I used yesterday (below), printed dry.

The watercolour paper was a sad failure, with a very bad lack of consistency, and in one case the surface of the paper glued itself to the plate and tore away.

Admittedly, the paper isn't intended for printmaking, and maybe should have just been printed dry. The combination of the weight and surface texture made printing with the nipping press sub-optimal.

On the first one I did (top right) I got the sky gradient upside down. Doh!

The lighter, smoother copy paper returned much better results.

The fields of colour are much more consistent.

I shall have to see what I can get hold of in the way of relatively light-weight acid-free hot-press paper.

Press Trolley

 

I've been pottering about the last few days making this trolley for my little etching press. It's mostly plywood, though the legs are salvaged from some pine framing timber from the scrap pile. I may, eventually, stain and varnish it, when I get up the gumption to do so.

It has lockable castors on one end only; whether it will need them all round is yet to be seen.

I'll use it to store all my printing clobber as well as the press — inks, brayers, barens, mixing plates and so on. And being on wheels, I can shunt it out of the way when it's not being used, which will be a blessing. Hopefully it won't get so heavy that I have to upgrade the castors; I think these ones are only rated for about 30kg  50kg.

Plywood Block

 

I thought I would give an ordinary old scrap of 18mm pine plywood a go as a printing block. Results were mixed.

Shown here are scans of the block itself (left) and a print taken from it (right). The print has been reversed horizontally so that it matches the image on the block.

You can see dark bands running from top to bottom of the block; these are from the growth rings in the timber the plywood was made from.

The density of the wood varies quite markedly between summer and winter growth, and that causes problems when cutting from one to the other, as the gouge can unexpectedly dive deeper into the surface, or skip up out of the wood.

Also, the variable density creates variable absorbency when the ink is rolled on to the block, and it swells unevenly across its surface. The effect is miniscule, invisible to the naked eye, but you can see the results in the right-hand side of print. I was using quite a hard brayer to roll on the ink, so it was quite unforgiving of any hollows. The printing issues are exacerbated by the uneven cutting caused by the density variations too.

Apart from the issues created by the growth rings, actually cutting the pine plywood was really quite easy. It was definitely more pleasant than cutting MDF, as there was no dust, and my gouges stayed sharper for longer. For simple prints without any complex line work, I think it would probably be fine. However, for anything other than that, plywood faced with a more homogenous, fine-grained timber would be much better — cherry, for example, or pear.

Topical Woodblock Print

 

Colour mock-up
— will probably change a bit

Let's start from the end. This is the completed woodcut in three colours (four if you count the seal stamp). It was printed in "Flint" water-based relief inks on a registration stage, using one of my glass-bead barens.

Process

The design is drawn on to 3mm MDF in Indian ink. That orangy-yellow is just there to make it easy for me to see where I have and haven't cut the MDF away.

MDF has its pluses and minuses as a woodcut medium. It has no grain, and it's easy to cut with sharp tools. It's like very hard lino in that respect, except that you can manage finer detail than you can in lino. On the other hand, it's a bit fibrous and fragile, and it's very easy for small details to be torn away by the pressure of the gouge. Also, the silica in it is pretty hard on edges, and you need to be sharpening a lot more than you would with proper wood or lino.

The wooden handled gouges in the stand (to the right) are all very cheap, and the steel is, frankly, not great. The blue ones in the foreground I got when I was at polytech; they were more expensive, though not desperately so — I think a set cost about thirty bucks — and their steel is much better, taking and keeping a much better edge.

Here's the first test print, to see if or where any more cutting needs to be done. Overall, I'm reasonably happy with it so far.

This is not, I should note, a good print, and it's intended solely for informative purposes. It hasn't been inked up evenly, and it should have more ink on it, but inking up will get more consistent as the old ink seals the rather absorbent surface of the MDF.

Once the key block — the main detail block, usually containing all or most of the outlines — is done, the colour blocks are created by means of an offset printing process.

The blocks are all placed in exactly the same position, kept in place by the black cardboard tabs you can see surrounding it, and the key block is printed on to (in this case) a piece of clear plastic, also locked into position with masking tape. Acetate is better, as it takes the ink better and is more dimensionally stable. Paper is usable, but because it is absorbent it makes the transfer on to the other blocks less reliable.

Once the plastic is printed, key block is removed, and another block is placed into the printing position. The plastic, with its printed image, is lowered on to the new block and the ink rubbed on to its surface. I use a rubber brayer for this.

The process is repeated as many times as is necessary, and now I have a reference image on the colour blocks, exactly the same as the key block, that I can use to exactly register the cutting for each new colour.

I'll do as many blocks as I think I'll need, plus one or two more in case of fuck-ups.

In this case, I'm expecting to want two colours in addition to the key block, and I've done three colour blocks. 

Hillside (1st state)

Mezzotint, 38 x 98 mm

This is a little mezzotint I just started. It's very little, only 38 x 98 mm, on a little scrap of zinc I found when I was fossicking about in the bottom of my intaglio equipment box.

I have no plan for this image. It's based more or less in memory, looking out through the bush on the steep hills around Lake Rotoma, where our family used to camp over the summer months.

I suspect I'll be doing some more on this plate, so I'm calling this a first-state.

I'm fond of mezzotint as an intaglio process.

Mezzotint Roulettes

I spent some more of my Art Money today on some mezzotint roulettes.

Mezzotint is a dry-point technique, in which the ink is held in thousands and thousands of tiny burrs and divots which are scraped and burnished back to create tonal variations. Where the plate is burnished smooth, it holds no ink at all; where it is completely covered, it renders a deep, velvety black.

Roulettes like these are one of the ways in which the metal plate is covered with those tiny burrs. They're basically just a steel drum, knurled with a pattern of some kind, which is pressed and rolled across the surface of the plate, leaving a pattern of divots behind. These divots can be layered and layered until the whole surface of the plate is just a fractal mess, or they can be laid down gently and carefully to create specific half-tone patterns.

(The black-handled one is actually a checkering graver, not a roulette, but never mind that).

Anyway, these little roulettes are usually pretty expensive, and a set like this would cost several hundred dollars. Fortunately for me, these ones have been hanging around in the stock of The Drawing Room pretty much forever, and I grabbed them for twenty bucks each.

Mezzotint — Headman

I've finished organising all my old plates, and now I'm getting started on making some new ones.

This is a little mezzotint on copper, about 90 x 65 mm. I like mezzotint a lot for its deep, velvety blacks and smooth tonal transitions. It was, at one time, used for very detailed images — I'm nowhere near there.

I prefer copper to zinc for this process; it scrapes and burnishes much more easily, and doesn't have zinc's tendency to stick to the steel burnishing tools. However, it is a bit more difficult to see exactly how far your burnishing and what-not has gone because of the metal's colour.

I can see that after such a long plate-making break, I'm going to need quite a bit of practice to get back to where I was. Still, I'm not wholly dissatisfied with this one.