Cricketts Inky Art Blot

I signed up for Nadadada 2012 at Wildflower Village earlier this week. I have been spending time sketching and playing with the colour wheel, coming up with plans for this exhibition that shows in June. I was originally going to paint a series of temples, starting with Stonehenge and ending with a Burning Man temple. Since playing in the sketchbook, I have changed my mind and will now probably do a mixture of painting and printmaking of a more frivolous nature. The scenery outside the studio window was very drab and grey today. The pond has now fully dried up and snow in on the forcast. Perhaps that will keep me in the studio working as I come up with my plans.

Using the method Wendy showed us, we made multiple copies of our image using tracing paper. First we made a master to work with, then as I had a lot of black, I made a copy with the black marked. The rest of the colours were then identified and traced as an individual layer. The image I am using will have around 7 layers. It is important to make sure that the drawing contains registration marks and trace these carefully on each tracing. The layers are to be printed in the press for this technique, so it was important not to have anything very high or hard to keep the paper registered. We made a tape bumper for our guide which enabled the paper to be pushed up to the same place on the matrix each time and still be soft enough to go through the press. The matrix used for this project was called Gomuban and is a vinyl type of product that is both thin and flexible, ideal for press use.