Whilst getting ready to print my final A2 linocuts, i thought it would be a good idea to create some test prints of my linos first before striving for that perfect print.
In order to print at such a large scale, I have been practically living at our LCA Vernon Street Campus and seeking assistance from the helpful technicians there.
The certain A2 press I have to use for my large scale linos is a piece of equipment that I have never come across before and took a bit of getting used too. This is why I felt that testing my linocut plates first would be a helpful idea, as with this hydraulic press you have to take into consideration pressure, which you gage yourself during the printing process.
I completed most of my tests on newsprint and cartridge paper, so as to not waste my expensive stock to be used for the final prints. This didn't help me much in terms of finding out what pressure to use in printing, but did help me find an inking up process that worked for me and any problem areas of the linocut plates that needed some extra care and attention.
Here are some images of the tests I created whilst printing and annotations to show areas for improvement and the process in which I found the best pressure and systematic way of working that worked for me and my linocuts:
Printing my final results:
Whilst creating my tests, I quickly learnt that this wasn't going to be an easy process and that there are a lot of key factors to consider when attempting to print at this scale and get the clean end result I am striving for. At this stage I have invested so much time in the cutting of my lino trying to make everything perfect, I can't jeopardise the final result now.
*Key processes/things I needed to consider and keep consistent whilst printing:
-Print Pressure: Throughout the test stages, I managed to find a print pressure that seemed to work for me and my prints. Between 80 - 100 bars or units of pressure seemed to create a print clean enough, the only problem with printing at this pressure is that the lino is likely to emboss into the stock. This can actually be quite pleasing as the physical product is clearly a hand printed result and not digital/screen printed.
-Stock: Stock matters hugely in terms of how the print is going to come out. I was under the impression from advice received by the print technicians at Vernon Street that due to the scale of my linocuts, a heavy weighted stock would be necessary to create a nice clean print. This turned out to be true in some cases, but I quickly found that the type of stock needs to change depending on how inked up your linocut plate is. The stock also needs to be thinner at a higher pressure, and thicker at a lower pressure, in order to eliminate patches towards the centre of the print.
-Inking: Inking is the main key to getting that perfect final print. Making sure the roller you are using has no fluff/scuff marks which could transfer on to the plate whilst inking - in tern appearing on the final print is vital. Once the fluff was on my roller (left over from cleaning with the provided rags), fluff would then transfer onto my inking reservoir. I encountered this problem many times and the only way to combat it is to start you set up again. Clean your ink reservoir away, clean the roller and begin inking again once more.
As my linocuts are so large, there was no roller in the resource that would reach the full length of it length ways and in order to create a colour merge appearing horizontally, i really could have done with this. In order to create my colour merge using the one roller which did not reach end to end of my lino, I would have to roll the ink onto my plate at one end, re load my roller with ink then offset this when applying the ink with the roller towards the other end. This took some getting used too, especially when trying to eliminate the separate lines of ink created by the end of the roller.
Over inking was a pain. I have so may tiny details in my lino plates, that the high pressure of the hydraulic press, as well as accidental over inking, caused a lot of ink to sink down into crevasses and show up in unwanted places on my prints.
At first i tackled this by having a light amount of ink in my inking/rolling reservoir. I was then able to apply ink a little at a time, until my lino plate looked like it had enough ink to print. This worked for a while, but as with most linocut print processes, over time the linocut plate itself becomes crushed by the hydraulic press. This is inevitable, so as my lino plate began to essentially get thinner because of the high pressure prints, i needed to apply more and more ink in order to get a clean print.
-Unwanted areas of ink: As with a lot of linocuts, it is extremely difficult to remove every part of the lino, so that unwanted lines don't appear inked up and printed on to the stock. I tried to eliminate this by cutting extremely deep into my lino along all edges and in some cases right down to the hessian back. This was a great idea in theory, but as my cut composition appears in the centre of my sheet of lino and I cut as much of the lino away as could around all edges, ink would appear from the roller on these edges and my stock would droop down during printing onto this area of unwanted ink creating horrible lines. The stock needed support to sit on top of around the edges and the way to do this in the future is to leave an area of uncut lino around the edge of my lino pate. This way the plate will have structure and the stock will have nowhere to droop. This will of course leave an inked up border o my print, but this can be cut and cropped away after the print has dried.
As it was too late and my lino was already cut away, the only thing left to was ink up my plate and meticulously stick layers of news print and masking tape over unwanted areas of ink. This took so much time and had to be removed and repeated for every single print. It was definitely worth it as my prints are as close to perfectly clean as i could get them...but this was the main area of print prep which caused the delays in my time management and long hours spent printing.
Hands had to be clean in this process as the possibility of transfer of ink into other areas I wanted clean was extremely high and this happened a lot. I would stick a piece of masking tape down over an unwanted area of ink, get ink on my fingers and have this ink transfer onto the top of the masking tape, requiring me to cover that tape up and so on. Nightmare!
Newsprint was great for a quick cover of larger areas of unwanted ink, however if not stuck down correctly, the newsprint would slip in the press or in transfer to the press and ofter slide over areas of the inked up composition blocking it out.
Another way I removed tiny spots of unwanted ink often in hard to reach areas or areas which masking tape was too large /fiddly to cover, was to use my lino cutting tools to gauge out more of the lino with the areas of ink on that I didn't want. This was fiddly but paid off when getting rid of those spots that would niggle at me if transfer onto the final print.
-Registration: I had prepared a mount board corner registration to use during the print process (mentioned in previous posts), in order to keep my linos and stock aligned whilst printing. When choosing my stock, i went for some very large sheets of a lovely heavyweight 280gsm 'Canaletto' off white stock that needed to be cut down before I began printing. This meant that the size of my cut down stock now didn't match with my corner registration which was to be used with A2 stock exactly. This actually ended up not being a problem and actually saved me some time. The cut stock sheets were large enough to not be registered so I could just drop the stock onto the inked lino plate and centre it by eye. I plan on cutting down my finals and cropping them so that the visual content appears straight and central so any scuff marks around the edge can also be eliminated as well. It also occurred to me that if I plan on selling any of my prints (if anyone will have them) that extra border space around the printed image is helpful to mounters and framers.
Unused registration guide: It was good preparation to create one despite me not using it and impressive to the print technician as apparently most people would just use masking tape to register a plate ready for print.
-Timescale: Overall the printing process took so much longer than I had originally thought it would. Each print took 10-15 minutes to set up every single time and this is no exaggeration. For what is meant to be a quick and easy way of generating a large amount of printed imagery, it was a lot of hard work.
The full process - step - by - step:
- Choosing 2 inks to merge and lay the ink down in 2 separate spots next to each other. I began printing with the colour merges first for both of my prints as they are essentially lighter colours to the black print I also wanted from my linocut plates. Always work from light to dark ink as dark will show up over lighter colours. Add drying medium to help the "stay wet" ink dry after printing.
- Create my colour merge by lots of repeated heavy rolling and off-setting until the two colours meet and merge in my reservoir.
- Make sure my ink reservoir remains full of ink by consistently dipping the roller in left over ink at the top of my reservoir when needed and lots more re-rolling/offsetting
- Move backwards and forwards from plate to reservoir whilst applying ink onto my plate (never roll twice over a plate as impressions of the design from the first roll and application of ink - will reprint onto the lino in the second roll). The roller itself was so heavy that I had to have breaks from lifting it or hold it above my head when moving from rolling the ink on to my plate and reloading the roller with ink from the reservoir. Great workout but not ideal after long days printing.
- Wash hands to then mask off all of my inky edges on the plate and re cut into the inked up lino with my lino tools to eliminated any unwanted smudges/spots of colour (ink gets everywhere!)
- Choose a clean sheet of stock and lay as central as I could
- Pack my plate "sandwich' with newspaper and print boards top and bottom,
- Place the print in the press and adjust/pump the pressure for the print,
- Remove my print "sandwich" carefully. (This was harder than it sounds as the hydraulic press is taller than me so to lift my plate out from a high height was a struggle and I often knocked my plate "sandwich").
- Remove print boards, packing and the stock (carefully)
- Transfer print to drying rack / find space on drying rack
- Remove all of that masking tape from the edges
- Repeat repeat repeat until happy with outcomes.
- Clean rollers and ink reservoirs when changing colours (from my colour merge to black for instance) with oil, soapy water and a lot of elbow grease! Press out as much of the ink from the plate as possible by using blotting paper/newsprint instead of stock and putting the linocut plate through the press (above process) 5-6 times, with a new sheet of paper for each press.
- Repeat process for new colour etc etc.
Strengths
Although the process was incredibly time consuming and painful at times, i am proud of myself for persevering and putting the level of effort in that i did in order to get a collection of final prints I am pleased with. This process was essential in achieving what I wanted and I feel that not cutting any corners and trying my hardest in the print room really paid off.
I have learnt a lot about the print press process throughout this time and I feel i have undergone a important journey in investigating what it takes to do this process professionally and use this print technique in my own illustrative practise. It is definitely something i would like to develop further and the results have led me to consider choosing printing with lino as a possible specialist area for my path into industry.
Weaknesses
I have learnt a lot in terms of how I would do this whole process differently and that preparation from the very beginning of the process - in this case the lino cuts- is what matters at the later stage of printing. The only weakness throughout this process, i feel, is the amount of time it took me to create my prints. eating away at the dwindling amount of time I had left to complete this module was a risk i had to take and maybe my own strive for perfection let me down in some ways. If I wasn't so intent on a perfectly clean print and lightened up a bit, the outcome would have been different, but may have been just as visually pleasing, saving me valuable time.
I would have also liked to have experimented with a wider variety of colour merges and block colour prints, to explore the value of my linocuts and what colours would work best. Of course I had already chosen what my colour palette should be for each print, however further experimentation and development would have nice to see if I had given myself more time and started this printing process sooner.
Frustrations
It is clear that I spent a lot of hours in the print room achieving my final results and had to face a rather large blow when retrieving my prints the following days once dry. When printing at the Vernon Street campus, my work seemed to attract a lot of interest which was great, however upon collecting my prints i found many painty finger prints and marks on my finals from other students who had been carelessly handling my work. Some of the marks appeared on the actually compositions and could not be trimmed away.
I understand that this is always the risk when using a busy print resource and that other students are there to use the equipment also, I just wish people would respect the work left on racks and handle with care and clean hands - as once work is on the racks to dry - that work is finished and scuffs/marks can make or break a final piece.
After seeing how a large majority of my prints had been marked, i had to decide what to do next. I had spent so long as previously mentioned, trying to eliminate areas of unwanted ink and it often took many attempts to achieve a print I was pleased with. It is is because of this that I decided to reprint a lot of my colour merges and compositions. This was starting the process all over again and using the last of my time up. I don't regret my choice, as i feel i did the work justice and stayed true to my efforts previously in creating a perfect print. The prints damaged were pieces I would not have been happy submitting and i am pleased I still came away from the many hours of hard work with prints I can use and am proud of, despite having to re-do them.
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