Have I lost my printing mojo?

It was just one of those days. I had not found time to prepare for my day in the studio as I had intended, let alone to make a new plate specifically created with viscosity printing in mind. Finding I’d forgotten to take a couple of important things with me threw me a bit at the beginning of the day.

The choice of litho/relief inks.

The inked up plate on the press.

The first print from the plate.

The ‘ghost’ print – this is when the plate is put through the press a second time with a new piece of paper, without inking up again.

I found it hard to decide which plates to print, and even harder to decide which colour inks to use. Viscosity printing uses a combination of inks in different thicknesses, and I needed to think through what colours I could mix from the tubes, their tonal values, and how they would work in different layers.

I decided to try the teacups ride not using the full three layers of viscosity prints, and the small carousel plates using all three layers. I started with primrose yellow as the etching ink in the grooved parts of the plate. Ultramarine blue mixed with titanium white was the thinner, oilier layer and crimson mixed with a little yellow + magesium carbonate was the thicker layer on top. I was aware that this combination might not work, but needed to try it and did think it would work better than it did.

Plastic small carousel plate.

First print off the plastic small carousel plate.

Ghost print off the plastic small carousel plate.

Card small carousel plate.

First print from the card small carousel plate.

Ghost print from the card small carousel plate.

It did occur to me that I can print on top of these another day.

I put the plates through with just a layer of blue ink rolled on, to see how much they were functioning as relief plates because there probably isn’t that much depth to a drypoint plate.

Testing how much depth there was on the drypoint plate by using it as a relief plate.

At this point I was almost ready to give up. It was hot in the studio, I desperately needed a mug of tea, but didn’t want to stop but I did decide to give up on the viscosity printing and to try adding some colour to the drypoint by hand.

Small carousel.

Small carousel.

Small carousel.

Small carousel.

Teacups ride plate.

Teacups ride.

Small carousel.

Small carousel.

I was disappointed with my day’s prints because they hadn’t worked well, but it is part of the learning process, and I had to try doing things that I was unsure would work. I’m back in the studio after the long Easter weekend, and hope to get a new plate made before then.

The fairground series

Foggy funfair I (‘Spanish City Funfair’) photo-lithograph print.

Foggy funfair I (‘Spanish City Funfair’) photo-lithograph print.

Carousel 1

First print off the small carousel plate.

Carousel 2 (viridian 1 over yellow)

Carousel 2 (viridian 2)

Carousel 3.1

Carousel 3.2

‘Extreme Energy’ 1.2

‘Extreme Energy’ 1.3

Teacups ride 1-1

Teacups ride 1-2

Fairground ride – ‘Freak Out,’ Artist’s Proof, October 2014.

Fairground ride – ‘Freak Out,’ Artist’s Proof, October 2014.

I had not intended to make a fairground series when I was starting to get into printing properly. I had taken some photos of fairground rides a few years ago and had hoped at some point to use them as a starting point for paintings.  When I did the photo-lithography course, we had been told to bring some photos with us, and one of mine was of a carousel, but with advice from the tutor, Marcia, I decided to use the scaffolded viaduct instead.

The fairground remained in my mind, however, and I found a view that included a helter-skelter for the next photo-lithograph. Then I got into drypoint and returned to the carousel image. Having done two fairground rides, I had to try others.

Why fairgrounds?

I don’t visit fairgrounds often and have had good and bad experiences in them. The carousels attract me. I remember them from childhood, and an experience in my early 20s, wandering through London one November or December evening and coming across a carousel in a square, enticing with its music, bright colours and evocations of childhood memories. I watched, nibbling at hot roast chestnuts from a nearby stall, trying to fix in my mind the image of the golden light and horses whirling around in the hope that I could make a picture of it some day.

Fairgrounds are strange places, areas where the customs and rules differ. They create a fantasy and excitement with colour, movement, noise and bright lights. They offer fear in a relatively safe environment. There is an air of danger about them, not caused just by the stomach-churning rides.

I started out trying to overcome the memory of a bad experience in a fairground. I was surprised to find that rather than producing all dark and moody images, I soon added in a bright yellow carousel. There could yet be dark and moody carousels to create, but the yellow one representing one of my earliest memories of being on one with my gran, in brilliant sunshine, was the one that emerged first.

Currently, my fairground images focus on the rides, not the people looking after the rides nor those experiencing them. The mechanical engineering interests me. I particularly enjoy seeing and hearing steam-driven fairground rides. Would people be as keen to ride on the machines if they were stripped back to the functional elements, lost their lights and bright paint and dressing up as aeroplanes or teacups or trains?

As an art historian, I am interested in the imagery of fairgrounds (much of which tends to be American), including the iconography decorating the rides. The last temporary fair I saw made me wonder if most of the decoration is designed by men due to the prevalence of cowboys, men with fast cars, and scantily-clad young women.

I vaguely recall young men who supervised the rides and took the money as lithe with hard muscles (gained through daily physical work rather than a workout at the gym), stepping as fluidly as a cat around the moving ride, chatting up young women whilst chain-smoking and eyes continuously flickering over the crowd passing by.

There is a sense that behaviour considered transgressive in everyday life would be acceptable within the walls of the fairground, especially when it is a travelling fair. You can shout and scream and throw up without people regarding such behaviour as strange. You could eat hot dogs and burgers and candyfloss without everyone observing considering you a junk food addict.

The photos on which I’m basing most of this series of prints were taken on a couple of visits to a temporary fair near Spanish City in Whitley Bay which used to have a permanent funfair, mentioned in a 1980 Dire Straits song ‘Tunnel of Love.’

Tuesday 28th October – Freak Out

I printed ‘Freak Out’ for the first time last Thursday (added the the images above). I’m not entirely sure it works. I might print more from the plate and then try adding watercolour or acrylic paint to some.

Starting funfair photo-litho prints

Finishing the 1st stage of the ‘Foggy Funfair’ photo-litho prints: adjusting the image on computer and printing it onto paper to print onto acetate.

This theme has been in my mind for a while.

I have never been a great fan of going on funfair rides. I liked carousels. I remember rather liking the dodgems and aeroplanes, but not the waltzers. I once or twice went on a little big dipper when I was young (and by myself because nobody else in the family wanted to try it) and didn’t like the sensation. I wanted to try the shooting targets stall but never have. The sounds and visual aspects of fairs have always fascinated me, and much less so by the smells of hot dogs, onions and burgers mixed with candyfloss, cigarette smoke – and less pleasant things.

I last went to a funfair with friends when I was an undergraduate. It was one of the largest travelling fairs in Europe: the Hoppings on Town Moor, Newcastle upon Tyne. There was an edginess about being at such a big funfair with lots of people wandering around in quite large groups and many of them having been drinking steadily for an hour or two. The people who ran the rides and the stalls seemed quite exotic, and certainly from a different world into which we dipped very briefly. Some of the younger men minding the rides had that easy lithe confidence as they stepped on and off or between whirling platforms, flirting with and expecting to be regarded as sexy by the gaggles of young women.

Test plate for Foggy funfair II.

The Spanish City Funfair had been closed years ago but there was a temporary spring fairground on the grass near the Spanish City building one foggy May day. I was quite fascinated by the rather creepy atmosphere of the fair in the thick sea fret. It was quiet with mostly adult visitors that day. I returned on a sunny day to capture the fair-by-the-seaside-on-sunny-day atmosphere but had an unpleasant experience which spoiled it for me. It changed how I wanted to portray the fairground.

I chose two of the photos to start this series and did a lot of work on the digital images first, partly so that they would have sufficient contrast to make a good plate but mostly because I had particular textures in mind for them.

I printed the images onto paper and then onto acetate. The acetates are placed on photo-sensitive plates and then exposed to ultra-violet light which, in this case, was in a UV box with a vacuum lid, then developed in the dark room, dried, fixed with gum arabic, and left to set for a while before being printed.

Test plate print for Foggy funfair I.

Test plate print for Foggy funfair II.

The test plate is to work out which the best length of exposure will be for the full plate. I tried these from 10 units to 30 units, at 5 unit intervals. I decided to try creating and printing the ‘Spanish City Funfair’ first because it looked as if it would work, whilst the other one possibly needs more work and I might scratch into the acetate yet.

Foggy funfair I (‘Spanish City Funfair’) photo-lithograph plate.

I had problems trying to get the plate wet enough so it hadn’t dried out between my putting down the sponge and picking up the inked roller – but not so wet that it lay like a puddle on the surface.

First print off the Foggy funfair I (‘Spanish City Funfair’) plate on newspaper.

After one newsprint trial )above), I made 4 prints on a thick white paper.

Foggy funfair I (‘Spanish City Funfair’) photo-lithograph print.

Foggy funfair I (‘Spanish City Funfair’) photo-lithograph print.

If I’ve cleaned and gummed the plate sufficiently well, I will print form more from this plate, and I’m considering experimenting with some limited hand-colouring, maybe with acrylic inks.