Week Six - A good week of printing.

Week six, almost halfway through the term now so I am having to pick up the pace slightly on my work. Having started the first of my exhibition pieces last week I was hoping to have a full week wherein I get both stones printed and some successful portraits achieved from it. I started this week with this portrait below which I finished drawing and did both first and second etches on.

I found out this week that before colour printing you should print your stone in black first to ensure the image is set in the stone, and then afterwards instead of closing the stone and then waiting to print in colour you can just start rolling the colour over the previous black and keep printing until the black goes and you are left printing in just colour.

I wanted to print my portraits in a colour close to a sepia, as if they are like aged portraits of family members, to do this I mixed up a burnt umber, a raw umber and a sepia to make the colour above to print in.

The two pictures above show the outcome of my printing - of which I am very pleased with, all the drawings printed really well in the coloured ink on the tan paper. What I really love especially with the larger portrait of my mum is how the marks, especially round the neck, have a strong loose quality which really expresses the medium of lithography.

I have then begun my next portrait of my brother to be finished next week.