Windsor Printmakers Forum

For our screenprinting session with instructor Jodi Green, mega print participants learned how to coat screens with photo-sensitive emulsion, created separations for full colour prints, exposed images onto screens using a vacuum light table and printed perfectly registered two-colour images.

Printing the first colour:

Registering prints for the second colour:

Printing the second colour:

The finished prints:

Matrix for colours exposed side by side onto one screen:

The resulting print, in fuschia and black:

Another finished student print:

Some images from our two-day workshop in the basics of letterpress printing with instructor Jodi Green. Students began in the first session by setting type for a business card as a practice form, and printing it on cardstock with black ink.

During the second session, students collaborated on a holiday card design. They chose to use offset lines of type and mix different typefaces and point sizes, so there was an extra challenge of having to find creative ways to pack an irregular form and keep all of the type immobile for printing.

The form set up on the press:

The finished cards: silver ink on green card stock.

On November 9, participants in our mega print course produced intaglio prints using a variety of engraving techniques on a plexiglas matrix with instructor Sandra Ellis. Engraving on plexi uses the same tools and methods as engraving on copper (minus the acid and tar and nasty chemicals). Linework is created using a drypoint needle or a nail, and tonal variation is achieved with traditional tools such as mezzotint rockers, roulettes, scrapers and burnishers, as well as by simply rubbing the surface of the plate with sandpaper. Our students incorporated experimental monoprint methods with more traditional intaglio inking methods to create a variety of full colour images from a single printing plate.

First proof in black and white:

With added colour:

Intaglio inking with monoprint marks worked overtop to create a full colour print in a single press run:

Another student’s black and white proof:

Adding colour and monoprint elements:

Running the block through the press a second time without re-inking produces a “ghost” print:

One more black and white proof:

Colour added in the “a la poupée” method (separate areas of the image inked and wiped in different colours):

On November 7th, WPF Studio presented a special workshop in the technique of trace monotype, taught by our visiting artist Jessica Ann Mills (in town from Omaha, Nebraska just for this class and the opening of On Crossing). It was a fun, relaxing and productive afternoon of drawing, making prints and eating cookies, all bathed in a warm glow of sunshine filtering in the windows of our basement studio on an unseasonably warm November Saturday.

Trace monotype is a technique in which ink is stiffened and rolled out onto a plexiglas slab. The paper is laid face down on this slab and a second sheet of paper is placed on top of that. This paper, a photograph, drawing or a blank sheet on which to draw freehand, acts as a map on which the artist draws with a fine ballpoint pen in order to pick up ink from below onto the print. The stiffness of the ink prevents too much ink from sticking to the paper and making the image messy and blobbed with ink, but a network of smoky, atmospheric ink marks will appear in places where the artist’s hand rests during the drawing process.

Below is a large sheet used by the instructor to create a print. The top image shows the photograph having been traced with ballpoint pen and oil pastels (for a softer, fatter line); the bottom shows the back of the paper, on which traces of ink have been picked up from the slab right through the thin Japanese paper used for the print.

Some of the participants, working on their prints:

Pulling the prints up off the slab to check progress:

In this one you can make out the soft traces of the artist’s hand brushing the paper outside the drawn image.

Some of the finished prints:

On the left is the completed trace monotype; on the right, a print we pulled by running the plexiglas slab through an etching press to pick up a negative image.

The negative image of the print above, printed off the plexiglas slab once the trace monotype was completed.

Windsor Printmaker’s Forum’s most recent exhibition, On Crossing, a cross border collaboration between Jessica Ann Mills (Omaha, NE) and Jodi Green (Windsor, ON), opened with a bang on Friday night with a large crowd in attendance to see the work and to meet our out-of-town artist.

If you missed the opening, there are still opportunities to see the work for the duration of the exhibition (until November 30). The WPF gallery will be open for viewing during our office hours on Wednesdays between 10am and 2pm, and Tuesday evenings between 6:30 and 9:30pm. You can also contact Jodi Green at wpfstudio@yahoo.ca to arrange for a private viewing outside these hours.

Some images from the reception (all photos courtesy Peter Zimmerman):

Details of On Crossing, a collaborative print project mailed back and forth across the Canada/United States border ten times during its production over ten months in 2008-09:

A few of the other works in the exhibition:

Jessica Ann Mills, Behind Lyndon House, trace monotype, 2007

Jessica Ann Mills, Bramble, trace monotype, 2009

Jodi Green, The Blue of Distance 2, woodcut and trace monotype, 2009

Jodi Green, The Blue of Distance 2, woodcut and trace monotype, 2009

On November 2nd, Windsor Printmaker’s Forum held the first session of our new Mega Print course. In just a little over three hours, students learned how to prepare a litho stone for printing, create a drawing, etch and print. We were hard pressed (get it?) to get through so much highly involved process in so little time, but in the end the students all went home with finished prints. Success!

Stretching down the second etch on the stone.

Pulling the print.

The finished student prints:

Please join Windsor Printmaker’s Forum for this one-time special event. As part of the On Crossing exhibition events, visiting artist Jessica Mills of Omaha, Nebraska will be conducting a workshop in the special print technique of trace monotype. Trace monotype can be done without the use of a printmaking press or specialized equipment, and combines the immediacy of drawing with the mediated quality of printmaking to produce images that are simultaneously powerful and delicate.

photo courtesy Jessica Mills

See more of Jessica’s trace monotype work on flickr.

All necessary materials (ink, Japanese printmaking paper and tools) are provided in the course fee of $50 (Windsor Printmaker’s Forum members in good standing receive 20% off this price).

Saturday, November 6, 1 to 4pm
Windsor Printmaker’s Forum, 420 Devonshire Road (north entrance, off Assumption St)

Please register in advance by calling the studio office: 519-253-9493 or by e-mail: wpfstudio@yahoo.ca

Windsor Printmaker’s Forum invites you to join us for On Crossing, a cross-border collaborative exhibition between Jessica Mills (Omaha, Nebraska) and Jodi Green (Windsor, Ontario). The exhibition is built around the collaborative print/mail art project “On Crossing”, which was recently featured in Graphica Creativa ‘09, an international print triennial at the Jyväskylä Centre for Printmaking in Jyväskylä, Finland.

photo courtesy Jyväskylä Centre for Printmaking

On Crossing
Friday, November 6, 7 to 10pm
Windsor Printmaker’s Forum Gallery
420 Devonshire Road (north entrance, off Assumption St)

For more information on the project, read the statement for On Crossing

See more images of the work installed at the Jyväskylä Centre for Printmaking on the project’s Graphica Creativa ‘09 page

See images of the work in progress at the On Crossing flickr pool

See more work from Jessica Mills on her flickr portfolio and from Jodi Green on her website

photo courtesy Jessica Ann Mills

In the second session of our two-part wood intaglio workshop, participants experimented with various printing methods to learn how to get the most out of the technique. While wood intaglio provides a gorgeous atmospheric plate tone due to ink collecting in the grain of the wood and printing, this makes it difficult to achieve a full range of lights and darks. To overcome this limitation of the medium, we applied ink in only selected areas of the plates, added colour both by hand colouring the finished prints and by relief rolling inks over the prepared blocks (essentially printing intaglio and relief at the same time), and used paper stencils to block out some areas from printing.

Some of the proofs from day 2:

Hand colouring with watercolour paints over a finished print (printed in black).

Intaglio inking the block in black, then rolling gold and blue across the surface.

Combining the intaglio + relief technique with double dropping (re-inking the block in a different colour and printing it a second time on top of the first print).

Intaglio inking (gold) with some areas left uninked (white), relief inking overtop (blue).

Instructor demo: intaglio (black) and relief (blue) inking in selected areas, with paper stencils laid between the block and the printing paper for additional white lines (on the right hand side).

On October 15th, participants gathered at the Windsor Printmaker’s Forum studio for the first session of a two-part course in wood intaglio presented by WPF Board member Jodi Green. Wood intaglio is a special technique in which fine line drawings are carved into wood blocks using small gouges. The blocks are then inked up in the same manner as copper or zinc plate etchings and printed on soaked paper, resulting in smoky, atmospheric images in which the grain of the wood is clearly visible as a tonal backdrop to bold carved lines.

Carving the block with the tinest of wood gouges. We limited ourselves to 1.5mm v-gouges for our first proofs in order to keep the lines small (large, deep lines can sometimes collect too much ink, which gets smooshy on your print when run through the press). Students also experimented with using an etching needle to scratch lines, which resulted in a softer, fuzzier line (similar to a drypoint line in traditional intaglio).

The pull: always the most exciting moment in printmaking.

First proof.

Two more, playing with selective wiping in different areas to control the quality of plate tone.

Adding chine colle: colourful woodcut flowers on Japanese paper pasted in during the printing.

Experimenting with multiple colours: rolling a second colour over the surface of an inked block to create an impression that contains intaglio (into the plate) and relief (surface of the plate) printing all in one run through the press.

In next week’s session the blocks will be altered to create some white space, and students will continue to experiment with combining intaglio and relief methods on the block to create full colour single-run prints.

A wall full of proofs at the end of a fun night of printing.