Printmaking at Virginia City

I have entered an art contest for Wine Hill Hotel, called "Wine is Art". The winning art piece will be used for the wine bar and it's publicity materials. The artist also gets to exhibit in the hotel for a year, which makes it an attractive proposition, so I figured that I might give it a try.

I headed up to St Mary's Art Center to use their beautiful press.

Prior to arrival, I had scratched a drypoint etching into a plate and prepared it for press work.

I also had a clear plate the same size to add a monotype.

The next stage was to add, then run some leaves on blank paper through the press on the inky plate.

The clear plate was then discarded and then the inked and now flat leaves were laid onto the drypoint plate. The drypoint was inked up using a heavy amount of brown, the leaves were almost completely black. This was done to add some visual weight to the activated edge of the print and to emphasize importance of the wine in the image.

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