Week Five - The first print!

After finishing etching my stone last week my first thing to get started this week was finally to print. I have only done the printing process once before so it was all pretty new to me but we went through it step by step.

The three prints at the bottom of this photo were the first practice prints done on newsprint, because they were on newsprint they came out pretty faded and then when I printed on proper paper the print came out much more defined and dark. One thing I did struggle with was getting the print as dark as I wanted, this might have been because of how I was rolling the ink onto the stone, after having this chance to get used to the printing technique hopefully next time it will be easier.

Below you can see the five final prints that came out, I am really happy with how the use of touche and drawing ink came out on the final print.

After doing this print I decided I definitely would like to work larger in future, this would allow me to make broader marks in the portrait. Below is a photo of a new stone I am starting based off the sketch to the left of the stone. It will be interesting trying to incorporate more faces in the stone to see how that works compositionally and also to try to incorporate more of Gerhard Richter's technique of portrait that look fleeting and hazy.