I went back into the print studio to have another go with my white tiger screen. Having had several days to think about and cut around the designs I had already printed, I had a few ideas of things I could do on this second opportunity. Some of the things I was particularly excited to try included intervening onto the paper before printing anything, with handprints, wipe and drag marks, combining lots of colours to achieve gradients and most excitingly the 3D effect obscured images which I had begun to experiment with in my first session.
The 3D effect images were what I was most excited to develop, so I got started on those first, laying down first lots of versions of the blue print. Before I then swapped to the red, I used the remaining blue pigment with some lighter tones and purples to begin experimenting with gradients too. In doing these I was hoping to save inks, cleaning materials and also time, and make my printing production less resource intensive. I really liked how the gradients looked, giving the prints a kind of filtered effect. Having unnatural colours gradiented together in this way also commodified the images of the tigers, making them appear decorative and further removed from their natural origins. The fact that there are steps I can take to make the process more economical and less wasteful makes me feel better about my position of privilege as an artist, conversely to the etching where I felt constantly aware of the wastefulness of my practice.
I then switched to red and began to add the second layers of my 3D prints. These came out much stronger than my first attempt in the previous session, possibly due to the fact the screen has been printed with and washed quite intensively since the first attempt, and now allowed much more ink through. I think this changed the look of the effect, as most of the tiger body was also now shaded, instead of the previous example which mainly captured just the strips overlaid. I had quite liked in my first attempt how the stripes had combined to make a visually confusing image, and felt this was slightly lessened in these works. The tigers took more prominent forms in these second experiments, looking less like an optical illusion and instead more like a generally distorted image.
I then wanted also to trial adding a black layer overtop to see what this brought to the image, but in the spirit of economy, I waited and again added extra colours to the remaining red pigments to turn them into another gradient. This red one was my favourite of the gradient pieces, and reminded me somewhat of the colourful pink and orange filter widely available across instagram, and further turned the motif of the wider tiger into a non-natural product / representation. As this one was slightly closer to the natural tones of a normal tiger, but inverted with a white body and orange stripes, the image had an element of familiarity but also strongly subverted this familiarty at the same time.
Next I wanted to try adding that black layer to my 3D prints. Some of these didn't come out correctly as the squeegee began to shift position in the mechanical press, causing too much black to print, somewhat drowning out the delicate blue and red behind. This was a shame as I had been really excited to have a large number of these printed, and a couple were unfortunately ruined before I realised and fixed the issue. There was one print with this layer which was my absolute favourite, because the red, blue and black layers were only every so slightly mismatched. This effected the print in two unexpected ways; intially it obscured the image quite beautifully, giving an effect almost of vibration or blur, imperceptible but rapid movement which gently defies complete visualisation. But also having the 3 layers slightly unaligned gave the piece a great deal of additional tonal depth to the work, making it appear a lot more realistic than the other, more stylised prints.
With the leftover black ink I repeated my gradient process, this time with blue, red and yellow pigments amongst the black. The red and yellow worked out well, blending into the black to give tonal suggestions of the primary colours, but the blue appeared too soft to really appear strongly with the black. These faded blends of other colours gave the subsequent prints an aged, uneven appearance like historical newspaper prints and cuttings.
Finally I wanted to trial methods of intervention, and so began dipping my hands in red pigments and pressing, wiping and dragging these around the page before I printed anything. I tried using both the blue and red from my 3D printing, but found the blue lacked impact when printed ontop of, and so preffered the red. The most powerful images were of handprints, as I felt these suggested the possesive nature of humanity, and the way we are always getting our hands on things and getting involved where we shouldn't. One in particular featured a handprint around the neck area of the tiger, which also gave an element of aggression and assault to the works. Adding the handprints definitely gave a political spin to the pieces, making them feel like artworks of protest.
No comments:
Post a Comment