Prints

 

Earlier this week I was playing with printing out some of my i-pad prints that I intermittently work on.  These particular ones are a series of stark black and white images that I have sometimes shared on this blog that originally started out as possible designs for relief lino prints. They are based on the paintings and drawings and are an attempt to strip things back even further. I really enjoy working within the limits of just the black and white and find it really creative. Some of the best of them have a sort of haiku quality I really like, others, visually, have more of a Frank Miller quality, which I also like. 

 

I have tried to create a couple of lino prints from them, but not with much success. They seemed to lack a certain energy in the cut mark of the lino tool, at least in this artists hands, compared to the much more fluent digital mark that I am able to achieve with the I-Pad. I teach lino printing to students all the while and they create some lovely results, but I have never managed to master a decent print myself in over twenty years of trying.  I’m keen to still persevere though, as I enjoy the physical engagement with the materials, as I do with painting. 

 

Anyway, I had been wanting to print these out on some heavier cartridge paper to see what they would look like and try to gauge a sense of whether they would be good enough to work as digital prints that I could possibly exhibit, or even sell if they were suitably dressed up in a mount. They did look much better when I printed them on the heavier paper, but what really snapped them into life was finding the right scale for the image. After a few attempts at different sizes I printed them at a modest 10 x 15cms and that seemed to fit the images really well. 

I’m pretty excited about it, and am now left wondering what I should do with them: should I frame them? Just mount them up and try to sell them fairly cheaply at exhibitions or different events and venues alongside my paintings? Or I have toyed with the idea of presenting them in a book of some kind. I could of course, do all of these things…