Finding a design

I had the idea of making prints from animals and began with photos from a visit to the Berlin Zoo, back in 2008. I made some sketches in my sketchbook. I also made a sketch of a simple still life arrangement with two brushes in a glass.

Then I wanted to try my cats as models. I knew from earlier attempts that I wouldn’t be able to make a usable drawing from life and therefore made a photo session with them on the terrace. Following a sudden impulse, I also made a picture downwards to the street, where I saw a man walking his dog – and chose this one for a sketch, instead of the cats.

I tried to focus on simple shapes and also applied some colour in the sketches to see whether the motif would work when printed in a plain colour.

Going through the sketches, I liked the man and his dog best for a first try of printing with masks. I did not know in what ways I might improve the drawing for the printing and decided to simply proceed to the next step, making the masks, to see how the drawing would work and gain some experience with the process.

         

Making the masks

Rather than drawing another version of the sketch, I used a multifunction printer to copy the design onto firm paper. I knew I couldn’t use the shadows at this stage and so cut out just the man who was connected to his dog by the line. I cut the connection between man’s foot and dog’s tail to avoid splitting the background into two pieces.

Printing with negative and positive masks

Following instructions, I started with the negative mask (the background), and only then realized that it did not entirely cover my perspex printing plate. But I had it already inked and decided to just have a go to see what it would look like. I did the series of first print, then ghost print, then taking off the mask for a third print. I used watersoluble oil paint on damp paper and a printing press. Then I repeated the process with a different colour for the positive mask.

  

  

  

I was actually quite pleased with the results, despite the background mask being slightly too small. I even found it worked quite well to give the positive shape some kind of frame.

A bit problematic was the thin line of connection between man and dog which printed only partically with the negative mask. This made it difficult to place the mask correctly and I thought this wouldn’t work very well if I wanted to print positive and negative mask on the same sheet.

I still had some paint left over and made a quick painted monoprint of the motif, then used damp paper and the press for the print. I included the shadows this time. Unfortunately the paint was applied too thickly and bleeded into the damp paper. But somehow the print looks interesting nevertheless.

Another set: The penguins

Because of the problems with the design, I wanted to make another set of prints with masks that I could use for the next project too, where positive and negative masked are printed on the same sheet. I chose the penguins.

I slightly reworked the original sketch to obtain continuous shapes for the penguins versus the background and took care not to create thin connecting pieces. Then I printed two sets from each mask: first print, ghost print and plate. I used orange for the negative mask and brown for the positive mask. I repeated the print set to check whether I could reuse the masks. This worked ok, probably because I had used firm paper for the masks.

  

  

  

Again I was pleased with the results, although I realized that this mask set would also be difficult to align exactly because the shapes were relatively complex and tended to bend outwards.

Some reflections on the process

I was surprised how well the ghost prints transferred onto the damp paper with the press. I’m not sure whether this would be the same when printing by hand. I also liked that the masks and the perspex plate created a light relief into the printing paper.

It’s not easy to find a good motif for the positive/negative mask. I wasn’t sure how to change the sketches to make them better adapted. I guess I need more experience to find out what works well and what doesn’t.

Overall, I liked the process although I found it a bit tedious to cut out the masks. This may have to do with the complexity of the shapes I chose. It would have been easier with simpler contours.

The watersoluble oil paint I used for printing worked quite well since it did not dry too quickly. But it was difficult to roll out evenly without making stripes or other marks from the roller. A constant problem is the high level of dust and cat hair in my studio which makes it close to impossible to obtain really clean prints. But dampening the paper seems to help obtaining relatively even prints.

I think the images I chose worked well visually, they were only technically a bit difficult to handle. Simpler shapes would probably work better, in particular when printing negative and positive masks on the same paper as in the next project. I’m not sure whether I will be able to register these masks correctly, but I’ll try and see what I learn from experience and experimenting.