Sunday 28 August 2011

The lost Hour (Wood intaglio)




I made this print towards the end of last year for a print exchange at Dundee Contemporary Art Print Studio, I spent ages trying to find out about doing this technique but quite honestly there isn't wasn't much available on the Internet never mind in any of the fairly extensive  collection of technical books i have on printmaking techniques.  I already had this piece of wood cut in a circle shape and it had the same image - although I changed it somewhat on the reverse side.  This I had printed as a relief print.  I have a few proofs of it somewhere and will add it into this post, when I come across it.  I have been prompted to post this image in response to a conversation that's currently going on in the Baren forum at the moment.
A course being offered by Hiromi paper is advertised as "drypoint wood block printmaking" and this piqued someones curiosity - well I think myself that it's going a bit far saying that you can do a drypoint using wood as your matrix.  I mean the burr and so on ??!!!   For the print shown here, I used a small scraper  tool (with a triangular shaft) to incise the main lines .  I also used a scalpel for the finer lines.  To achieve the various tones I used Lascaux acrylic hard ground, diluted to about 3 strengths.  I seem to remember the diameter of this circle is 17cm.