West Yorkshire Print Workshop - Downstairs

This room smells great! 

This is the downstairs main print room which has an imperial press and an etching press and is surrounded with three big windows so has lots of beautiful light.

In this room I create stencil relief monoprints on the etching press like these...

 I start by making lots and lots of paper stencils,

I then ink up a plastic printing plate, I like to use process colours because of their translucency and lush overlapping creating lots of new colours and lots of very happy accidents.

once the plate is inked up I place on the stencils and then position this plate on the press using a pre made paper reference guide.

Then I crack my knuckles, apply a little elbow grease and turn the wheel of this beaut of a press,

Then peel back the blanket, put on the drying rack and prep another print.

This is such an organic process.

I go into the print room with a very loose idea of what I want to create and then see what happens!

There's so much accidental magic involved with this process, and I enjoy the lack of control and unpredictability.

I layer the colours up, 

again mainly using process colours, 

with different stencils or inked up used stencils from previous prints and just keep going!...

Its a very simple process and I love it💓! even tho it's simple its so versatile and there still lots of ways in which I want to explore this process.

The only problem again is, 

this room like all the print rooms have really fast clocks, 

where time goes twice as fast as any other normal room, 

it really is a mystery why time goes so fast in the print rooms, 

scientists can't work it out,

 honestly! 

The stencils after being used over and over again become little works of art in themselves which you can collage with...

Here are some mono prints I've made at WYPW in the downstairs print room...

I created a whole book, filled with monoprinted figures illustrating a text I written called 'Together',
all with this process....

In this print room I also create drypoint etchings.

With this process I scratch my image into a plastic plate,
ink the plate up and rub aways the excess ink, so ink just stays in the grooves of the image i've scratched into the plate.

Then put it on the press.
On top of the plate I add damp paper than put the blankets down,
spin the print wheel and say the magic words , 'Harry Belafonte'
and out the other end I get prints like this,

this is the plate being inked up,
and this is the finished print.

and this is one of my favourite things in the downstairs print room,
the top of the magenta ink tin!
looks like something from greys anatomy!!

Head over to WYPW for more info on their fabulous facilities!
and follow on instagram #wypwopenday #printdayinmay