Print Stories: Winter Solstice – conclusion
In my last post, I introduced my latest project, a brief set by The Ropewalk, on the theme of the Winter Solstice.
After the initial sketches (shown above), I developed them a bit more, before committing making the plates. I had always intended that the series would show the dark side of the myths and pagan references around The Sun God, The Lord of Misrule and The Green Man. This darkness would extend quite literally to my approach to the way I wanted to produce the prints. I was aiming for dark tones with subtle areas of tone and few highlight areas. To do this, I used a base of carborundum, which I first used on the prints in my ‘Liquid and powder‘ series.
Here are the plates:
The Lord of Misrule (printing plate)
Death of The Green Man (printing plate)
To the surfaces of the first two plates, I dripped PVA glue via a loaded brush, to create subtle lines, dots and a little raised texture. I knew that when it came to printing them, ink on the plate would wipe away quite well, to provide middle and dark tones, but not as dark as the carborundum background. on the last plate, Death of The Green Man, I glued on fabric flowers as a beard, again hoping that mid-tones would result.
The plates looked ok, but I had concerns about whether the plates would and up to the pressures of the press. This was because I had cut the details of the plates far too thin, particularly around where the crown joins the hair on the plate for The Lord of Misrule and on a couple of the rays on The Sun God. In fact, I had to staple the plates on the reverse at these points, to stop the plates from breaking off.
So, what about the prints?
I got lucky. The plates stayed intact (just) through the inking process, but I knew that I had perhaps only one or two attempts at printing them, before they might break.
The Sun God: print detail
The Lord of Misrule (collagraph print)
The Lord of Misrule: print detail
The Lord of Misrule: print detail
Death of The Green Man (collagraph print)
Death of The Green Man: print detail
Death of The Green Man: print detail
Death of The Green Man: print detail
What next? Not really sure, but for a while now I’ve been thinking about a dramatic change of scale, by producing a series of really small prints. A series might suggest itself around a single theme, which could be on human hands, trees or they could be abstract textures. Let’s see what happens!
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