Getting Printing!

Our prints are going to be slightly smaller than A3 in size and we start of by printing a square background color. I chose a dark grittty grey as my background as its a colour I really associate with the city.

Next I drew the signpost outline on MRPVC using bitumen. I'm using the Rubberbandits' 'That's Limerick City' slogan as the main heading for the sign.

I exposed this image onto my screen.

I printed this in blue as all the signposts on the roads around the city are blue.

I drew the symbols of the sign and the sign posts on MRPVC in pencil and lithography crayon and marker.

Silkscreen

So I'm actually the silkscreen block for these 3 weeks.  For my humour brief  I'm focusing on the things about Limerick city that I find funny.

 

The  signpost on the motorway into Limerick will be the basis of my image.  It has a sign banning horses from the motorway eventhough horses are nearly as common as cars in this city.  I hope to alter the sign to make it incorporate the humor and horses of Limerick.

I've been looking at the work of Perry Ogden and photographer James Horan, who both focus on the Irish horse culture as part of their work.

Humour....or Protest

We've gotten the titles for our new project and we have a choice between humour and protest. Having done mindmaps for the 2 titles, I find myself way more drawn to humour. At the moment, I think I may base my project on humour to do with place : all the funny characteristic things that we associate with certain places.  We are using woodblock and screenprinting techniques for this project, and I'm starting off in the woodblock group first.

Lithography Prints!!

 

Proofs

 

Final Prints

Plans for my Lithography Edition

I have gotten to print my lithography stone yet so I thought I'd upload these images of my plans for the edition of 6 that I will be doing.

 

I was interested in how other countries have had politicians break their promises so I wrote 'keep your promise' in a few different languages in red ink.

 

Watercolour wash.

 

Yellow, Orange and Red Ink.

 

'Keep your promise...or else' written repeatedly in green pencil.

 

'Don't make promises you can't keep'  written repeatedly in different colour pencil.

 

 

I have been looking at the photographer Willie Doherty who incorporates text in his photos of Northern Ireland, and this inspired me to play around with text in my prints.

 

 

 

 

 

Lithography!

 

For lithography, I decided to continue with the same idea I was working on for my photography project by looking at gestures with double meanings.  The drawing above is of my friend and I trying to arm wrestle.  The image can be interpreted in 2 ways : as a gesture of friendship or as one of tension.  I think it shows well the tension between the government and the ordinary working people at the moment so I feel this is a good image to work with for my lithography prints.

 

 

After cleaning my stone with 3 different grades of carborundum and putting a gum arabic border on it, I traced my image onto the stone backwards so that when I print it the image would come out the right way around. The limestone is very sensitive to grease so we weren't allowed touch the stones once they were clean. 

 

 

Once I had the basic outline of my image transfered I then began drawing on my image properly. Although we could use litho crayons and tusche, I decided to use lithography ink to create mine. I had a couple ink drawings done in my sketchbook as prep work for lithography printing and I really liked the loose lines and look the image had.

 

Once my image was drawn on and dried, I dusted it with talc, painted on medium and strong etches onto the image and then covered the stone with gum arabic solution.  Im looking forward to printing the stone to see how the image turns out.

 

More Photography Project

 

 

 

I've mostly been looking at gestures and the meanings that they may have.  Some of them are instantly recognisable as rude gestures.  Others have double meanings like the gesture made famous by John Lennon which is known the world over for peace, was also made famous by Winston Churchill during WW2 as a sign of victory during the war.  I have been experimenting with gestures that can convey both tension or friendship. I photographed myself and one of my friends arm wrestling and the image can be read in many different ways.  I may use this idea for my lithography prints.

 

I have been looking a lot at Willie Doherty's photos of Northern Ireland which are stark and often in black and white.  I have also been looking at the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, who uses hand gestures as a way of confronting issues and power.