Yesterday I began printing the first layer of the reduction print. It didn’t go quite to plan….
I’d managed to mix a shade of green that was the colour I wanted, but when it came to printing things didn’t go smoothly. I’d made a jig to put the lino into to help with registration but I’m wondering if it wasn’t quite big enough and therefore a bit of the lino didn’t sink into it fully, and that’s what caused patches of the print to come out white…
I guess this could be an interesting effect if I’d wanted something to look rough/aged but this wasn’t what I was going for. Interestingly enough I used a large rolling pin to rub the back of the print here. I’m not sure whether I didn’t apply enough pressure or if it’s just the jig that caused the white area.
This print came out with much more even coverage but it’s still not a good amount of ink on the page for what I’m going for, although it’s a nice subtle looking print.
I tried to make a different green to see what that was like, it didn’t seem so dark on the inking plate. I don’t like the shade, it’s far to dark to work with blue layered on top! But the print it’s self has much better coverage, I used a rolling pin here, and a thicker covering of ink on the lino.
I did a little experiment with painting a lighter green onto an area of the lino and rolling the rest of the dark green everywhere else. Whilst the quality of the ink transfer on the paper isn’t great, I like the general affect and think this could work well.