I received a shipment of printmaking supplies on Friday, so I got to do some printing this weekend! Included in the shipment was a product I’d never tried before, called Scratch-A-Print 2, and decided to try it as an alternative to screen printing. It started with a sketch of a lemon slice:

And a screen, which is — to quote the product description — “a special red-coated tissue” (although you can see that it is really blue) mounted to a card frame.

Since the tissue is translucent, I was able to use the lightbox to transfer my design to the screen.

Here’s the cool part: the coating on the tissue is pressure-sensitive, so that when you trace over the design, the tissue is exposed where you traced — the area to be printed. (There is a sheet of clear film that protects the tissue from tearing when you are drawing.) If you hold it up to the light, you can see the opened areas.

So this was all very exciting, and — since you can’t use oil-based inks to print with the Scratch-A-Print screen — I pulled out some acrylics to print with, and loaded up my foam roller with a lovely cadmium yellow.

Then, with my paper underneath, I flooded the screen with paint and held my breath for the DRAMATIC REVELATION of my BEAUTIFUL LEMON SCREEN PRINT…

Yeh, not so much.

I tried a few more times with more paint, watered down paint, more pressure, and while I got some better results, they were all still crap. I finally tried flooding the screen with ink on the foam roller, placing another piece of paper on top and applying MORE pressure with a brayer, hoping that would force the paint through.

Really it just made the top paper stick to the screen. I managed to peel it off, and ended up with an accidental print from the blue tissue residue. It was probably the best print of the night.

However, it did open up the screen.

I gave the screen a rinse, and tried printing one more time. The result wasn’t bad, but still not quite good enough, and you can see that there was still blue crap and graphite residue on the screen. Eww.

So I rinsed it out again and tried printing with black, because at least you wouldn’t be able to see all the crap getting into the paint. But that still didn’t turn out any better than a really bad photocopy of a fax of a photocopied fax.

And by this point, my screen started to fall apart.

Generally, it was a very disappointing night of printmaking, and I’m not really excited about this Scratch-A-Print stuff anymore, although with nine more screens, I’m not about to give up on it totally either. Some simpler line art might work better, and I’ll have to do some Googling to see if I can find any better tips or instructions on printing with the stuff.

Stay tuned. :)

Today I decided to take a break from everything to pull some proofs. I got, like, one really nice print out of it, but more importantly I got the taste of printing back in my mouth. And I like it.

I decided to document some of the block printing process for those who don’t know much about it, and because I find it unusually exciting. Block printing starts with a block (see my previous post) of wood, linoleum, potato — whatever — into which you carve a relief design, with the raised area being the printed area.

On an inking plate (a big sheet of glass or metal), I mix my ink colors and ink the brayer by pulling out a bit of the ink with the brayer and rolling the brayer in the ink, first one direction and then perpendicular to the first direction to get a nice, even coat. Inking is my favorite part of the printing process, and here’s why: when you do this, it makes a nice sticky sound, not dissimilar from that of latex paint being rolled onto a wall, and thus — to me — it is the sound of impending color. Ahhhh.

Once I’ve got a nice coating of ink on my brayer, I ink the block using a similar technique as for inking the brayer. The first inking of the block is an exciting moment, when I get to see beyond the pencil lines and cuts, and for the first time get a true idea of what my print is really going to look like (only in mirror).

And now we’re ready for some press action.

Now don’t laugh. This particular press is all I could afford, and although now I could start saving for a magnificent letter or intaglio press, I don’t have anywhere to put it. So while it may seem like glorified stamping (or maybe it’s just me and my printing press inferiority complex), it still makes a nice print.

This part is like making a sandwich, and even outside of my persnickety sandwich-making/eating universe, there IS a particular way to stack it. In my little Speedball press there is a foam pad built into the bottom (in a traditional press you would use a thick blanket, and the stack would be reversed); I position the paper on top of the foam, then place the block on top of the paper — ink side down — being very careful NOT TO BUMP IT once it’s made contact with the paper. Then we press it — HARD!

Finally, the moment of truth: lifting the block away from the paper (using a sort of slow peeling action so as to avoid smudging) to reveal The Print.

Now these first prints I made are proofs, so over the next few days I’ll go back and forth and tweak the block a little, pull some more proofs, maybe do more tweaking — all until I’m pleased with the printed result. Then I’ll be ready to run an edition of final prints, in this case, cards.