Texture
Tried newspaper- thinking perhaps the newsprint would soak up a different amount of ink and the the print would be visible. Not the case…
Sprinkled salt. Amazing how large those grains become through paper.
newsprint and salt
Tried sprinkling warm water. It just made a splodge of wet ink. Perhaps I sprinkled too liberally… (Didn’t bother taking a photo)
Back to the drawing book
Sketched a few ideas I had in my mind involving abstracted natural forms. I was inspired by a print for curtains, only vaguely remembered from my childhood. It was of kites: I wanted to incorporate the shape of a flower seedhead, in greyish black, on a yellow background with white reserved shapes.
final sketch
variants
I was pleased with the yellow background which came out well printed and even.
background
but the flowers didn’t work.I planned to use backdrawing for this and painted the plate in the appropriate place.
ink for backdrawing
But the ink wasn’t dry enough and messed up the print. Besides, I got the positioning seriously wrong, somehow…
fail...
The second time, I cut a mask leaving the flower seedhead shapes, but this time the printing didn’t work, as the lines were too thin. I really didn’t want to use pressed real flowers, but neither of these attempts worked, so I’m not sure what I could have done instead.
chrisocaprintingblog 