Re: wiping KM73 polymer plates
What a great discussion this is. I am so pleased that there are gravure printers coming out of the woodwork here! I agree with all that's being said here regarding "why make gravure prints?". I can add to that from a personal standpoint that photogravures are a way for me to meld my love of photography with my love of intaglio printmaking. In fact, when I see photographs that move me, I often use descriptive words like "inky blacks". To an intaglio printmaker, that doesn't simply mean "dark" or "solid". It means they have a sense of depth and texture. Something more there to see than a solid tone. The fiber of the paper and the ink deposit I suppose has something to do with it, but it's a sense of a 3D surface. Now that we can use the computer to make large negatives to contact print, the process is just too seductive for me to ignore. As much as I love the smell of fixer, and the look of film and all that, I also enjoy the technical geekdom of computers. I still stubbornly work with a PC instead of a Mac because I love the tinker around inside the box and upgrade drives and cards, etc.. Macs just work. What's the challenge there? :o))) technical stuff: wiping polymer gravures... I've only done 3 or 4 now, but I'm finding them very quick and easy, and yeah, maybe a little fragile. You sure can't scrub them with stiff tarletan. I make my own tarletan, so I have some that's very soft, which is what I'm using with good results. I've been applying the ink with cardboard pieces, then working the ink into the plate with soft tarletan, then blotting a few times with phone book pages, then polishing with phone book pages, then a little hand wiping. My Nuarc is still acting up sometimes, but it's almost certainly the old blackened bulb. new one should arrive Monday. I've still been able to do some tests though because the integrator is doing it's job of regulating the exposure in spite of the sometimes flickering light. I'm very happy with it though, and have learned how to adjust the integrator so that one "unit" = one second, check the line voltage and even adjust the transformer inputs... see I just had to open it up and poke around inside :o) I plan to put up some notes about all that on my website, or maybe just set up a blog for it. Might be helpful to somebody. later! Susan www.dalyvoss.com On 2/8/07, Jon Lybrook <jon@terabear.com> wrote: Christina Z. Anderson wrote: > Jon, > I should have been more descriptive in what I mean by looking like a > BW print: the solarplate will look tonally so much like a BW print > that someone might think, why bother printmaking when you can print it > in BW just as well? That's what I mean. This is the critique I got > about my solarplate prints--almost a "so what"? But that is what > intrigued me about the process, that and I personally feel that the > printmaking process adds a texture and relief that isn't present in a > BW print. But you are right that they are different. Hi Chris -- thanks for the clarification. I've gotten the same 'so what -- why bother?' response from laymen. Good point about the relief. Nancy also mentions the ability to work in graphical elements such as scraping, and composing multiple plates into to a print -- so it's not just a different way to make a photograph -- it's a different way to make an image (albeit unlike most photographs -- intaglio prints are 100% archival and chemically quite neutral -- just oil-based inks on rag cotton paper). Some traditional intaglio printmakers are often quick to dismiss the importance of achieving more photographic qualities - citing the typical, high-contrast, xerox copy look is "good enough" to get their point across, and that if you want something that looks like a photograph will recommend you "do photography" instead.. I suppose if intaglio printmakers really wanted that look in the (recent) past, they would simply chine colle a photograph into their print with wheat paste! Viola! Done. The answer to 'why' for me is that printmaking from an intaglio plate affords many wonderful, hands-on techniques one can't really achieve any other way -- from layering chine colle paper to add color and texture, or to emphasize sections of the piece by selectively wiping different areas, or adding colored inks to different regions of the plate, to laying down multiple veils of inks to add to or subtract from a composition, to using several plates on a single print, etc.... Thinking of Printmaking in this sense -- as I think Nancy was alluding to -- a photograph can be just an element in a larger piece -- it expands the realm of composition beyond the viewfinder, which is quite exciting and challenging. Also, in this realm of Printmaking, no one really seems to expect it to look like a photograph, nor do many of the established printmakers want the headaches of having to live up to that kind of standard "all of a sudden". They work with what they know. The photographic image is only one of their tools - not an end in and of itself. >
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