Here are two more photopolymer plate [solar plate] etchings I did a couple of days ago. I’ve been told that technically, they should be called intaglio prints, not etchings because the metal isn’t actually etched. The male nude is redrawn from a sketchbook study I did about four years ago and I’ve reworked it several times in different monotype techniques. I like the awkwardness of the pose, the painful stretching of the head thrown back and held for quite a long time.This is our young soldier model; he likes to be challenged. He suffers for our art.
I’ve been incorporating text into my drawings and mixed media work for some time, but it’s much harder to do so with most printmaking techniques because you have to work back to front. One of the joys of this method is that you don’t have to draw and write a mirror image. I know da Vinci could write mirror text beautifully, but frankly, there wasn’t much else to do in those days – no TV, no Facebook, no Internet Scrabble, no blogging – so he had plenty of time on his hands 🙂
Tomorrow is the final day of the Swansea and Cardiff Printmakers‘ exhibition in Oriel Canfas, Cardiff – I’m invigilating from 10.30 – 4.30 if anyone’s around – pop in and have a look. And it’s the first of Ros Ford‘s 4-day Open Studio event at Swansea Print Workshop – please do go see the amazing work she’s done during her residency – the time has flown!
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Love the comments about da Vinci! No wonder he was always inventing things. He’d have died of boredom otherwise.
I’ve been reading around and can’t work out where the ink is. My understanding is that if the ink is below the surface then it’s intaglio e.g. etchings and drypoint. If it is on the surface and the surface has been cut then it’s relief printing e.g. linocut and wood engravings. I used to do gum arabic transfer printing, which is similar to lithography. The surface is flat and it is the different properties of greasy and hydrophilic parts of the plate which produces the print. This might be described as planographic. Not sure where solar plate fits in.
The solar plate is intaglio. The ink is rubbed over the plate and then wiped off with scrim, so the only ink that remains is below the surface. You have to used soaked paper and an intaglio press to get the print.
Thanks.
What…More etchings? Those are great, and thanks for guiding my parents, not sure I was ready for all that nudity 🙂
I’m on a roll – there will be many more! And I think you need to be taken in hand……..
Yes, intaglio is the correct term – it also covers drypoint and collagraph but etching has become so ubiquitous now 🙂
I was taught that etchings, engravings and mezzotints are all intaglio. When the plate is incised in some fashion.
Possibly planographic?
Judith