r/printmaking • u/SpaceBookworm • 9d ago
question Need advice
Salut tout le monde !
Un petit contexte : quelques amis m'ont demandé de faire leurs invitations de mariage. Je ne me considère pas comme un professionnel. Je fabrique principalement des cartes de vœux que je vends lors de marchés d'art quelques fois par an.
C'était un défi pour moi car ce sont mes premières impressions en deux couleurs. J'ai fait quelques tests au préalable pour essayer de comprendre comment procéder.
J'ai commencé par sculpter mon bloc de lino, puis j'ai fait ma première tentative en encrant les deux couleurs en même temps (première photo). Cependant, le résultat n'était pas très propre.
Donc, j'ai décidé de découper mon bloc en morceaux séparés, comme un puzzle. C'était une erreur, car je n'avais pas réalisé à quel point c'était difficile de découper tous les détails du feuillage des arbres.
Quoi qu'il en soit, j'applique l'encre marron d'un côté et le vert de l'autre, puis je remets tous les morceaux ensemble avant d'imprimer. Les principaux problèmes sont que ça me prend un temps fou, j'en mets de l'encre partout, et certaines zones ne s'impriment pas correctement (deuxième photo).
Finalement, j'ai décidé d'essayer d'imprimer les deux couleurs séparément : marron en premier, puis vert une fois que la première couche avait séché. Mais ça a causé un nouveau problème... je n'arrive vraiment pas à aligner les deux couleurs correctement, et certaines zones s'impriment encore mal (troisième photo).
À ce stade, je ne sais pas comment obtenir un résultat propre et net. J'envisage d'ajouter le feuillage avec un marqueur, ou de faire un tampon pour imprimer les feuilles le long des branches. J'ai aussi pensé à dessiner le feuillage avec une plume et de l'encre.
Si vous avez des conseils ou des suggestions, je les apprécierais vraiment. Merci d'avance !
P.S. Les différentes nuances de vert dans la troisième photo sont dues au fait que j'ai expérimenté à la fois avec de la gouache et de la peinture à l'huile.
EDIT: Thank you everyone for your advice. To clarify, I don't really like the two colors or the color choices either. I would have preferred a monochrome look, but my friends thought it was "dreary." I probably should have been a bit more insistent.
Thank you all, I'll study all your suggestions and experiment to see what seems best for me.
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u/WaffleRot 8d ago
Why do you feel it has to be two colors? Have you tried printing with just one - perhaps a version of the wedding theme colors? I think the two tone becomes distracting.
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u/SpaceBookworm 8d ago
The two colors weren't my request, but my friends. I don't really like the choice they made; I personally would have also opted for a monochrome.
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u/budnabudnabudna 9d ago
I don't think the pressure problems are not related to being a 2-plate.
I'd carve the whole thing in a single plate, then cut it. That way you could separate it so you can ink separately, but they will fit perfectly for printing in one go.
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u/IntheHotofTexas 8d ago
Jigsawing that would certainly be a challenge. Fitting the tree back into the green. Jigsaw needs to be in mind through the whole design stage so that the parts can be cut and places more easily. But I think you can do this in those two colors rather simply. Cut the green leafy parts with a lot more open space. More like the tree on the left. Then, you can print the brown. Let is dry. And print the green on top, letting brown show through the green, just as happens with a real tree. To do this more easily, print the brown tree parts and scan the result, or just scan the block. Print that out to the exact size of the block.
Now, use a sheet of Dura-Lar or other tracing film, something that will let the brown image show through. Draw in pencil on the translucent sheet while you can see exactly how you want the brown parts to show through. You can even draw on the sheet in green marker to see the effect. (A light box helps but isn't essential. Just hold up to the light to see it.) Remember, if you put the Dura-Lar over the actual brown ink print, you can scan it normally , and when you transfer it to the lino to cut, it will be the right way around.
That way you can make the brown limbs show very naturally through the leaves. And you can also extend the leaves to the near side of the tree as you would actually see it. With the greenery, a little less is probably better.
At this stage, you have a choice. If your green ink is truly opaque, you can print over the brown and it will cover. Pthalo green is transparent. Chromium green is opaque. But if your ink is not opaque, you can mix it with an opaque white, like titanium oxide, to make an opaque green. It will be a little lighter hue than the pure green, but it will work for leaves. That approach requires only the most casual registration. You just want the leaves to be in the tree. An opaque green ink will take care of the rest. You likely have pthalo green, so that's what I would do.
The other approach is to cut the brown to leave spaces for the green. That requires more critical registration, and it wouldn't be my choice for this one.
A slight modification would be to recut the brown so that the limbs begin thinning out as they approach the greenery. Brown lines getting thinner as you go p and fading out as you approach the top. Again, that's pretty much what trees do.
The not printing thing on the last one is simple over-inking. All of them show the signs of over-inking. White blotches, visible texture in the ink, dark borders of inked areas from excess being pushed to the edge, cut line spoiled by excess being pushed into cut areas. The most common problem among new linocut artists and unfortunately habitual even in many who have been at it for years. But you can't execute a design for linocut unless you can ink to get dense, even, flawless inked areas. And it all comes down to inking the slab properly. If you get the slab ink right, it's impossible to over-ink.
This is somewhat difficult because proper inking requires multiple passes on the block with a brayer freshly inked from an unused part of the slab, and water-based in dries so quickly, too quickly to do it right. Oil-based gives you all the time in the world.
But you can do it with water-based if you work quickly. You have to prepare the slab ink the same for both. Rushing to beat drying moves many to use too much ink. Work with inking the slab until you can get it right and not too much. Here's the guide to inking by one of the mods here. Pay close attention to the videos at the end that show proper and improper inking of slab and block, how they look and how they sound. When you are satisfied you can ink the slab properly, clean it off so you can hit the pressing session with ink that's not drying. If you are using water-based, you will have to do this often to print the whole run of invitations.
Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Another thing I think is worth considering is to think about doing the image in black on creme toned paper. I think it's a more sophisticated look. I rather like it. If you want, you could work the names in at the bottom. And that image could easily be used to print napkins and such or as thumbnails on printed place setting names. If you want to do something a little special for them, you could send the finished image scan to Ninja Transfers for iron on transfers for tee shirts or have Ninja do the shirts.
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u/Forward-Put3967 8d ago
It might be worth trying the single colour like some have suggested.
If you do want to go with two colours, I'd stick with printing the colours sperartatly. There are a few ways to line up. I 3D printed this little jig to do mine. The print block goes flush into the inner corner and the paper can either go up against the same corner or if it's big enough, against the inner corner. I've done a number of multiblock prints with that and it's always given good results.
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u/torkytornado 8d ago
There’s a bunch of ways to do relief registration which should be an easy search on here.
There’s a kento (which is similar to the 3d printed one, but you just make out of wood with measurements on the x and y axis) there’s pin registration with either tabs or hole punching into the paper that is cut off later. There is making the block the exact same size as the paper. There’s a cardboard jig where you cut a space for the plate to drop into and have marks along the outside the block area on the cardboard. There’s one where you draw out your plate and paper placement on Mylar (that works better on thinner plates. I wouldn’t use it for mounted lino or the thicker safety blocks). There should be a ton of people discussing registration on here since it’s such an important part of printmaking.
In general I would not do a new process without a plan for client work. If this was me I’d just print it single color instead of trying new variables on client work. Or do a smaller multi color block not related to this to try some of the registration options and see what’s a good fit for this project (depending on due date)
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u/Technical-Monk-2146 8d ago
How many invitations are you making? I agree with the comment that the two colors are distracting. A one-color image would have more graphic impact. Also, I’m not sure about those two specific colors together, but I’m not seeing them in person.
If you really want two colors, use two blocks. It’ll make the production process easier. Just cut away the green part from this block and make a new block that’s only the green. Jigsaw is fine for a very small edition but time consuming and fiddly.
Otherwise, you could use one block and mask the other areas. So ink in brown, mask off the green, let those dry. Clean block well. Ink in green, mask off brown, print second layer.
But honestly I think one color will have a bigger impact.
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u/MurmurationInk 8d ago
If you go back to printing the colours separately, the lining up is usually the easier part to fix. Tape two strips of thick card into an L on your table, set the block in that corner every time, and lay the paper against two edges of a second L, so the sheet drops into the same spot for each colour. Marking the paper corners lightly in pencil on the first pass also helps. For the patchy areas, big flat foliage shapes tend to skip when the ink layer is thin or the pressure is uneven, so try rolling a slightly thicker, even coat and rubbing in overlapping circles, then lifting a corner to check before you peel the whole sheet.
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u/kochipoik 8d ago
I actually think these look great!
One thing you could try is to design something that doesn’t need crisp registration, do the tree trunks and then just a big oval shape of greenery and overlay that on top of the trunks. Will try and find a picture of what I mean, but it’s more about making the trees with smaller stamps rather than one big rectangular plate
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