Week Three - Things going wrong, rectifying situations and thoughts about my eventual exhibition.

This week started with me accidentally removing the portrait that I had previously applied to this stone using gum transfer, I used too strong of an etch which wiped the portrait off completely, I thought perhaps maybe some would be brought back after inking the stone up in the second etch but alas it did not.

However I still have the work I did around the portrait so I think I am going to work on another portrait on another stone and print this stone over the top of a printed portrait. This also allows me to start work on a portrait that I will use in my exhibition instead of just as an experiment.

I then completed the second etch on the stone below that I wrote about in last weeks post, I wanted to experiment not just with shapes but with the colour I would print with - so I printed the stone twice, the first in a dark sepia and the second in a blue. What I found from these experimental prints was that the top block in the prints was supposed to show shapes I had tried to etch into but even a strong etch didn't effect the ink so that is definitely a technique I will not use going forward. The middle shapes were a mix of ink with water but parts of it were slightly to light, the shapes at the bottom of stone however had a really nice structure to them but are perhaps too dark.

Thus with the portraits I do for my exhibition I think I am going to use ink to create these impressional shapes - perhaps ever so slightly watered down to get some texture, I also found that if I printed twice from the stone without inking up the colour became less harsh and it reduced the opacity and strength of the shapes. I think this is something that would be work well if the portraits because with the shapes being slightly more faded and in the background it still allows the viewers central focus to be on the portrait which I will print in a dark brown/sepia.

Lastly this week I started to think more about the layout of my exhibition and how my final prints could look. Using the photos of my prints I showed above I transferred those shapes from the photo onto a image editor on my iPad and using previous portrait prints I worked the shapes around the portraits in different colours and strength of colour.

Experimenting digitally this has allowed me see more clearly how to go forward with my work, I definitely think that the shapes that represent each person around them will have to be more faded because otherwise it overpowers the portrait. I am still unsure about the colour so this will have to be something I repeat with a physical print to see whether a blue is better or whether the tan colour will be more cohesive with tan paper and the portrait printed in a dark brown.

As well as this I have been thinking about how my exhibition would be hung as this really changes how the viewer experiences my work. After a talk with my tutor we suggested perhaps a salon hang or french hang. Which would mean having all my works of different sizes, shapes and frames hung up together, this works hand in hand with the overarching idea of my work as all the portraits are a portrayal of people in my life. So they do not sit individually they all work together to tell the story of influences in my life - therefore using a salon hang (like how I have edited it below) would bring all my work together allowing the viewer to see it as one whole piece of art not just separate works.