A whole lot of printing

 

On Saturday I managed to really test the 3D printed plates I had printed at the recent 3D course by doing a series of 10 - printed 12 or 13 of course.. 

I did quite a bit of preparation on Thursday - chose paper in consultation with Fiona, cut paper, marked out a registration page etc. All set to go on the etching press.

I discussed ink with Fiona - we thought because it was relief printing I would dampen the paper and use water based ink that is usually used for lino-cut printing. But that did not work well - too uneven and ink bled.

So I ended up using a water based etching ink - which worked well as you can see from the photos below.

The prints are going to be tested as postcards  - so some letterpress to be added yet.

It has been a long time since I printed using the etching press - so I was pleased with the outcomes.

New tricks - 3D printing

 

Fiona and I did a two half day course with Judy Barrass on using 3D printers at the Noosa Library to create relief printing plates such as the completed one above - which still needs a bit of tidying up.

A couple of photos of the printing of the boat and hut follow.

The course was an introduction so the plates and printing are a bit on the rough side. Before we could ink the plates they needed to be sanded with fine sandpaper to take the rough printing edges off.

We did a couple of quick prints on damp quality printing paper using a small portable printer. The results were quite good.

Now to refine the the drawing, 3D printing and ink printing processes.