Fine Print

Since deciding on a topic and concluding my research, I have finally been able to get to the fun part of my project - printing! I’ve experimented and created a few intaglio and relief prints and am really enjoying both techniques. To refresh, intaglio is when you create burrs or indents in the plate (I am using thin plastic sheets) that hold the ink, and the technique I am using is called dry point. When you are thinking of relief, think of your fingers. When you get fingerprinted, the raised parts get covered in ink and pressed onto paper, leaving a print of the highest points. The same goes for relief.

For my relief prints, I decided to use an endangered animal theme. So far I have only made a western lowland gorilla, Hawaiian geese, and a bengal tiger. The gorilla print alone took a grand total of twenty hours, but the geese much less as it was smaller. My plan is to create as many as I can, continuing this after my ELI, then I’ll potentially create a blog and post photos of my prints and a blurb about the animal I printed to raise awareness about the species. 

The intaglio prints I have been working on are much different. I like the loose, thin lines that are used and how it is more open ended in terms of what types of lines and shapes that can be created. Unlike my with my relief prints, I don’t have a specific theme for intaglio, so my subject matter is more diverse. I have printed daisies, buildings, and a few other random designs. Unfortunately, intaglio is difficult to do at home, because I don’t have some of the necessary supplies like a printing press, so I haven’t made quite as many as I would have liked to, but still have some time before the end of the semester.

~ Emily M.