[Light music plays, screen reads 'Registration sheet and setting up the press'.]

Liz Perfect

So, now I'm going to show you how you set up your press for printing a monotype. This is also universal for printing drypoint or lino. It's how to make a registration sheet for your printing. So, what I've done here is I've got my plate. I know I'm going to use this. I've placed it on my paper and I've drawn around the plate, but left these criss-crosses so that when I place it, that's much easier to line up by eye.

Now I know that I want to have borders that are 4.5 for the top and the sides. And traditionally you have a bigger border at the bottom, so I've made my border here 5.5. So, all I do now is measure 4.5 here and make a little mark on the registration sheet. And the same thing here, 4.5. The same thing the other side I've already done. And now I remove the plate and just draw those lines. It doesn't have to be square with the rego sheet itself, it just has to be square with where I'm gonna place the plate. Now this traditionally is a clean area, so when you handle the print you have to have clean hands so that no ink goes onto the margins. Again, with this, when I measure the top and bottom, I'm gonna have criss-crosses so that you can see where to place the paper. I have had students in the past tear the registration sheet to the right size, but it's much harder to see where to place the paper. Now when you buy a piece of paper, printmaking paper from a shop, quite often they're 56 by 76, and this may govern how big you make the margins. Optimally, you can have lovely big margins for your prints. And of course if you're doing more than one print as a composite piece, you're gonna want a bigger piece of paper.

So, you may decide, oh actually I can't afford that. If I do my margins 3.5, then I can actually fit three sheets across the top rather than chuck away, or not chuck away, store a piece that's not big enough. So, here I'm doing the top where I'm gonna place the paper, lining the ruler up, and this is the bit that I need where it crosses over. So, I've got, that is where I place the paper. You do it a little bit by eye as well. 5.5 is this side here. And this is the bottom, so it's got to be bigger. I might, yeah, I'll do 5.5, 'cause I've now cut my paper that size. You could have got away with a little bit bigger.

Now I'm going to show you about how you place your registration sheet on the press. But before we get to that, the very important etiquette for using a press. There's lots of safety hazards that you need to be aware of. One of the things that you don't do is wear anything long, including long hair, in case it gets caught as you're taking the print through. You wouldn't wear a scarf, for example. Take the scarf off, or keys on a string, because that, as you move forward, can get caught in the rollers.

There's several pinch points on a press. On this press, it's this roller, and underneath you could get your fingers stuck. The rule with a press is hands clear, so there's only one person operating the press and everybody else stands back. Now before we start, the pressure on the press has to be set, so I'm going to show you how you do that and then we'll place the plate on top. First of all, this is the acetate sheet that I referred to.

We're gonna put the registration sheet underneath the acetate sheet. Now the important thing is that you need to have that really in the middle as much as you can, so that your printing takes place in the centre. The roller has a particular width and that has to be accommodated. Your paper's gonna go there, the roller's still gotta be able to fit, so you've gotta make sure that the plate is placed in the centre of the press. I've still got it a bit more to one end than the other, so I'm gonna pull the registration sheet further this way. Perfect. Now I'm gonna put the plate underneath so I know what pressure to set the press at.

So, I'm lifting the the roller up. I'm going to put the plate that I'm gonna print on underneath it. Doesn't have to line up with the registration sheet just yet, but there we go. To make sure that I don't dirty the blanket, I'm gonna protect the plate with this paper. And now I'm ready to set the pressure. When you set the pressure, make sure that you've got the tray, and this is the tray, in the centre. So, between the two, it's equidistant between the two ends of the tray. The pressure goes on clockwise. That increases the pressure of the press. So, I know that once it starts to feel tight, that's a good pressure for my monotype. This is where the inking up of the monotype's important because if you have too much pressure, you're gonna squash all the ink that you've carefully drawn into.

There we go. The second way that you can print planar prints, and this is called planar, it's not relief printing and it's not intaglio, is by using a baren, and I will demonstrate that with this printing as well as with lino. So, now I know it's all ready to go. I've got my paper cut ready to size.

All I've got to do now is to ink up my plate. So, to support the roller to the right height, you can cut pieces of lino or card to put further on the tray and set the roller onto it so that when the roller comes to the plate, it doesn't refuse to print. It refuses to print by actually pushing the plate along and smudging it as a print. Whereas if you've put these support pieces, it then means that the roller is set to that height and you get your print.

[NSW government logo.]

[End of transcript]

[Light music plays, screen reads 'Dry point'.]

Liz Perfect

I'd like to show you a glorious technique called drypoint, and this can be made into any hard surface. Traditionally, it's using a scribe to scratch into a surface.

So, traditionally it was used for metal, it was actually used for gold engraving and things to do with the war. So, you can use offcuts of metal or etching plates that perhaps nobody else has used for etching. You can even use the inside of milk cartons or food containers and get your students to enjoy using their actual packaging divisions as a bit of a challenge. In this case, what I can show you is a drawing. This drawing is very large, it's over two metres in real height, and I've just taken a photograph of it so that I can convert it into a drypoint.

The beauty of using acetate over the other packaging materials I've talked to you about is that it is see-through. So, you can place it onto your image and literally just scratch into the acetate. So, there are many ways of scratching into acetate or metal, but you use a scribe and this can be as varied as a needle. It can be these custom-made scribes. It can even be a dart if you take the wings out, which I love, because it's got a bit of a weight behind it. And I'll show you how you etch into it or inscribe the plate. You're gonna place this over your image. I'm just showing you a sample and you just can draw into it.

Now the beauty of drypoint is you can make lots of different marks and you can crosshatch if you want to achieve shade or you can simply just stipple. You can make shade with lots of different movements. You can just impose a rhythm onto the picture by the way that you've used the tool. To show you this, I'm going to give you an example of some earlier ones that I made, and these were in response to an antique shop that I did an etching of and I wanted to do a drypoint. So, I used very definite marks to build up the chairs that were hanging and then worked eventually even more into it. So, you can see, you can keep on going.

This is another example. It's a copy of a Goya print, who's the most wonderful printmaker. Look him up. And here's the lady on a swing. This is how I've rubbed in ink to the drypoint, so I can imagine how I might like to introduce more incising, more scratching, and eventually I've done it with this example, where really the girl is high lit and you get plenty of light and shade. It's the drama that Goya has in his work. Finally, the one that we're going to ink up is the one that I'm just working on now and that's here. I haven't even bothered to cut the plate to size 'cause as you'll see in our demonstration, it's very easy to do. I just wasn't sure if I wanted to have the image offset or not. So, with this I'm placing it again with the masking tape over the image, and then I'm enjoying making the marks in quite a systematic way, inspired by this drypoint here. Really want direction and energy in the marks.

Now, in order to see what you're doing, it's good to have light to one side. So, I'm moving my head down to get the light and I can actually see what I've created there. And you really do get rewarded by the more work that you do on the print, on the plate. The next thing to tell you, and it's the same with the lino, less so with the monotype, with the lino and with this, you can just ink it up to see what you've got there. You don't even have to print it. You just put ink on it and that's a particular technique. You're gonna take it off 'cause you want those marks to be in the grooves with drypoint. You may think, well that's a bit messy. You can do very precise things with this medium as well. These are some words that I made, which are just inscribed. I'm going to put white behind it so you can see it more easily. And you can see the movement is very precise for those words, for those letters. Of course like lino, both images in relief and intaglio get reversed. So, I was actually copying these words backwards to then print them in the correct direction.

So, to emphasise the difference between intaglio printmaking and relief printmaking, with relief printmaking, you are rolling the ink on top, so the surface that you leave is what prints. With intaglio, the contrary is true, you're incising with a needle and then when you ink the plate up, you're pushing the ink into the grooves.

Now, I am going to show you how to ink up your drypoint plate. This is a handy hint, if you can have some newspaper that's this format. It means that as you distribute ink on the plate, you can keep flicking the paper back and keep the plate nice and clean on its back, so when you go to use it in the press, it's not filthy. This is a water wash up ink that's very good for proofing because it's water wash up. As a tradition and a reason for better distribution, you always massage the ink. On this particular one, it even asks you to mix the ink, which is the complete opposite of oil-based ink, so 'cause it separates out. Now from a friendly framer you can get off cuts of matte card that they're not using and then you make these little applicators with it.

So, the first thing I'm gonna do is to spread some ink on the plate. It's a good idea to check you've got the plate the right way up because with this transparent acetate it's easy to ink the back by mistake. So, just feel it so you can feel the roughness of the cuts. And I'm just spreading the ink on to the drypoint. If you've got three or four people using the ink, just emphasise that they have to be really careful with spreading because in drypoint it's not only intaglio, you're scratching either metal or plastic and you're raising a burr. So, if you are sharing ink and keep on doing that, you could actually have burrs of plastic or metal in the ink. Even more diplomatic is people have their own little pool of ink that they're going to use. This has hardly worked at all, this plate, but if it was very heavily worked, I'd be a lot more worried about it. Now, you've got this extraordinary thing. You've just put the ink on, but you're gonna take the ink off now.

So, I'm gonna, see how dirty this newspaper's got or inky I should say? I'm gonna go onto a fresh piece of newspaper, and I'm now gonna remove the ink that I've put on. People say, but why do I ink up the whole plate when I've actually only drawn in the middle of it? The reason for that is that one of the effects you get is a plate tone. So, that means that if you've only inked up the middle bit, you'll get a sort of grey halo around your image rather than the whole plate being the same colour. Now, I'm going to clean it with tarlatan. You always start with the dirty tarlatan first, presumably you've got some, because you're just gonna now really try and push that ink into those grooves. So, I'm not cleaning it, I'm just trying to push the ink in to make sure I get whatever little bit of drawing I've done on this proof. Again, this is a proof that isn't finished, but it's to show me what I've got to do more of, see if I actually like it the way it is. So, I've taken off a lot of the ink. That blob is on the back 'cause I've put it on a dirty bit of newspaper there.

Now, I'm gonna polish it. At this stage you think it's never gonna come clean. You're very, very patiently wiping the plate and it looks the same as ever, and the temptation is to actually push hard. You don't, you're very, very gentle because if you push hard, you're removing the ink from the very incisions that you want to create the drawing. I've got a little bit of a cleaner bit of cloth now, this is puffy pillow. It has to be nice and soft, because if it's got any ridges in it, it could ease its way into one of your grooves. And the polishing here is very, very light. We're inclined to sort of think it's the same as polishing a car or a kitchen sink. It's not, it's very, very light. The other tip I'll give you is to use one of the corners of the newspaper or even spare bit of paper to hold the plate, 'cause otherwise you can end up with finger marks on the plastic. You print it all and it's all lovely nice paper, and you've got these finger marks in the corner. Can you see it's gradually getting lighter? So, what feels as if nothing's happening actually is happening. Again, why is she still using the dirty cloth? 'Cause if I use the clean cloth, I'll take too much off, and this is a first proof will be very faint again. You need to really, you really need, if you want to keep the proof and it's not just for a trial, you really want to do two.

Now, at this stage you can hear the scrims just coming off the acetate. I'm doing the edges more than the middle because one's inclined to keep crossing over in the middle and then suddenly you've got dirty edges and nothing left in the middle. Now, if anything at this stage I'm going to under wipe. So, the blobs you see there are the blobs on the back of the plate. So, before I put it on the press, I'm gonna put a piece of protection paper. One last go. Some printmakers, if they want a really clean image, will use a page of a telephone directory to polish it with, but I certainly wouldn't advise that for your first proof. Telephone directory, couldn't I just use newspaper? No, there's something very specific about the properties of a telephone directory. So, if you've got any to chuck out, don't chuck them out, keep them 'cause they're brilliant for etching.

Because I'm doing a proof, I'm just treating it very uniformly.

What you're seeing behind you is a linear print here, and then I have inked it up again a bit like the monotype, except it's actually a monoprint, not a monotype, because I've got the image underneath to see where if I bit it again or if I was going to just leave it with ink where I'd like to leave the ink. So, you can do unique state prints like that. Just leave the ink in other areas. Then traditionally again what you would do is clean the edges. Well this Perspex is so thin it won't have ink on the edges, but when you bevel a metal plate it will. Can you see how I'm getting that ink off? And it's a very specific movement where you don't, you don't wrap your fingers around the plate, otherwise, you get a polished white border. You're literally pushing your finger against the edge.

Now I'm gonna set the press for this acetate and I've got a spare piece under here so I can set the pressure of the press to that. The other thing I have to include is the intaglio blanket. This is a finer wove blanket that you use for intaglio prints. So, I'll just slide that in between the plate and the roller. I might have to take more of it anti-clockwise to undo the roller. We'll pop that in there like that. So, I've got three layers. I've got the blanket, the relief blanket, the intaglio blanket, and my piece of Perspex. And I'm going to put, always put paper in between your plate and the blanket so you don't get ink on the blanket. They actually are washable by hand.

Now I'm gonna tighten the press, and as you remember, you go clockwise to tighten the press, and you have the tray exactly halfway. And you do it until you feel the pressure's the same on both sides, so it really is a matter of feel. If you've got a very large press like this one behind me, you can also check how many strata it's gone up. Those are the curly corkscrew marks on the side. I feel pretty happy with that pressure. So, let's now roll the tray, ready to print. Now, I'm going to damp the paper. Now just like with relief printing, with intaglio with drypoint, you've also got a choice of paper. So, here I've got this very economical rice paper. It's very strong when it's dry, but it's very weak when it's wet. This is just an etching paper, actually, it's a multipurpose paper, which is about 300 gram, and so it's nice and thick, and it'll really be easy to push that into the grooves and same way it will with the rice paper. I'm gonna show you the two different ways of wetting the paper. For this multimedia paper, I'm going to let the paper soak for 30 seconds in this bowl of water.

For the rice paper, I'm going to literally insert it by the front edge and then lift it out. 'Cause if I leave it in that water, it'll just dissolve. Once I've done that, I'm going to let it drip from a corner because otherwise you're gonna get a very, very wet towel by the time you finish your printing at the end of the day. Once I've let this drip, the way I dry it is in these towels. So, I'm just gonna place the paper here. It's very easy to crease the paper in this process, so just handle it very carefully and press it from the centre. What I'll show you we're going to do is we're going to use, we're going to use the rice paper for our ghost print. We're going to use the multimedia, the drawing paper for our first proof.

Normally, when you're proofing, if it's just for you to prove to yourself what you've got there, you just use rice paper or something cheap. But I want you to see the different effects on the two papers. So, now this is ready. Again, I'm going to lift it out, let it drip. This particular paper doesn't have a wrong and a right side. With etching papers, you'll find that where the hallmark reads correctly, that's actually the correct side of the paper to use. It's not a matter of life and death, but there is a grid on the back of the paper, which is from the way that it's been pressed and manufactured. Now again, I'm squashing the water out from the centre of the paper, 'cause if you just push up with your hand, you risk creasing it.

Now, this will very much depend on the weather. Today we've got a cool day, so that's still very, very wet, might even be a sheen on the paper. That's too wet to use to print with. So, we need to dry it off again. For this reason, often you have two towels. So, I'll place it on the top towel and fold that down. Now, I know I'll get a bit more moisture out of it. Now, I'm going to take the plate, again, this is clean hands, so I'm picking it up with newspaper and placing it on this piece of clean backing paper I've got, because as I commented, there is ink on the back of the plate. Now, I'm going to get the paper and I'm just gonna place the paper onto the drypoint. This is thicker paper than the Japanese paper that we've used before to print with, so it only needs one backing sheet to protect the blanket. Hands clear. Anybody in the print studio doesn't come anywhere near me now 'cause I'm using the press and I'm taking it through. What you do is, even if you want to roll slowly through the press, you don't stop because if you stop you can actually make a line in the inking. Now, today I'm gonna roll it back the other way, which is what Rose Lindsay used to do. She used to always have it go both ways. The danger is that you can jog the plate, you can misplace the plate by jogging it so it prints twice on the paper rather than a clean outline.

Now, immediately I'm seeing my pressure is great because I've got a lovely indentation in the paper and now I'm gonna lift it up and see. Well, it is a very light proof because it's the first proof and there's very, very minimal drawing in it. It needs to be more developed. What you could do with this proof now is do a ghost print, not with the proof with the plate, and another thing you could do is actually to ink up the plate like I have for intaglio the next time. But then before I print it, I put some transparency medium into the ink onto a roller and I relief print it as well, so I can relief print it, have the relief ink on top of the intaglio, and get a colour in the background.

Now, I'll just show you it with the rice paper. And this means you can work into the proof. I am going to put another bit of backing paper just to increase the pressure, 'cause it is only a ghost print. Again, hands clear. You may find that during a class of three hours or two hours, that the blankets wriggle their way in one direction across the press, so really keep an eye on this because the blanket can actually stop the press from working. It can get stuck. And it hasn't ever happened to me, but you can see that already, the blankets migrated in one direction.

So, like your monotype where you did a ghost print, this will give you something that you can perhaps work back into or even give you something more to share, because printmaking is a very lovely democratic process. You can share things, you can give things away, and usually the market for prints is a lot more affordable than they are for paintings. So, it was a very faint print, but you've still got, you've got a ghost print there.

[NSW government logo.]

[End of transcript]

[Light music plays, screen reads 'Monotypes'.]

Liz Perfect

This segment is about monotypes. It's a glorious medium, like the drypoint and lino. Degas used it a lot. He used it to start his pastel drawings.

Monotype means one print, but you can make a ghost print following that. So, I'll show you what you do. You use a hard surface that you can put through the press, or you can print by hand, such as a piece of acetate like this, or something thinner. And what you're going to do is roll it up with ink.

Now if you use a fast drying water-based ink, like these ones, you need to add retarder, because in this medium, you're gonna work the ink while it's on the plate. So, I'd be rolling it up, and I will demonstrate this for you later. Then what you do is, you get cloth, lovely thin piece of cloth, and you draw into the ink. So, this is called subtractive technique. Where you take off the ink is gonna be where you're creating lights. Before I continue, I'll show you an example of that. This is a monotype, and it's based on the drawing of the tree that I showed you for the drypoint. This is a monotype that I have worked into with white chalk.

So, you can use it as a base for drawing like Degas did, and in fact Gaugin and others. The other way you can do monotype is again, you roll it up with your ink, with your added retarder, and you place a piece of paper on top of that, and very carefully, you only draw with a pen through the back of the paper with a sharp point. You don't lean on it, because that'll print, but you just draw through gently, and then lift it, and there's your one print that you'll get from your image. I'm going to show you how to ink up for a monotype. This is a subtractive method that I mentioned before. This is water and soap, warm water and soap wash up ink that's very good for it because it doesn't dry, it only dries for printing by absorption. And I'm putting it on the plate like that, and I'm gonna use a roller to spread it.

Now with monotype, if you leave too much ink on the plate, when you place the paper, it's just gonna squash into all the marks that you've made. So, for my taste, I've left a bit too much ink on the plate. I'm gonna take some off. It's also very easy to get roller marks when you're doing subtractive, so always finish it with some very soft, lightweight rolls. Don't press on the plastic as you're inking it up. I'm still making sure the thing is nicely coated. I've got three roller marks on there, so I'm just gonna go over it very lightly. I mean, you know, you may not mind if they've got roller marks on them, but, might make them a bit more random.

That's covering my options.

Okay, I'm placing the roller there on the inking up slab. Now the next thing I'm going to do is wrap this cloth around my finger to draw into the plate. The gorgeous thing about monotype is it really does show the gesture of the mark. It shows the direction that you're making the marks in. Now with this particular ink, I could go away and have lunch, and come back and carry on drawing. It wouldn't dry. If instead you're using just a water-based ink, you need to add plenty of retarder, and you need to really print it, and clean the roller afterwards, because otherwise, if the ink dries on the roller, you've got problems getting rid of it.

So, quite simply, just do some lovely marks. Really enjoy it. If you look up Degas' pastels, you'll find that they're actually done on a ghost print using this technique. Try out different cloths. I'm not finding that cloth's very absorbent, I'm gonna try this one instead. Yeah, this one's better. I'm just making marks as if I've, this is a nest that was found. My referencing image here is a nest that I did a monotype of that was tiny in the grass, and I'm enjoying pretending I'm seeing the twigs again. I quite like the way that the edges. Perfect, yes, I'm just gonna do that with this one. Something like this, you imagine just holding it in your hand, and you're feeling the texture of it. You can draw with the end of a paint brush is good, or pencil, for a bit of a sharper mark. Okay, so let's try printing this with a baren, just so you know how that looks.

So, I've got some paper ready here. Clean hands, now I'm going to print it. You can place this on the press, or print it by hand. Whatever area you use, it has to be clean for this. Place it this way round. Now with monotype, it's a planar printmaking technique, and I'm going to use very thin paper, which is rice paper. Rice paper is shiny on one side, and matte, coarser on the other. Because I want really quite an atmospheric image, I'm going to use the coarse side. I'm going to hand print it with a baren. You can use a wooden spoon, you can just use a clean roller. It's anything that you can really press the paper on to the image width.

So, now it's quite tricky with rice paper, 'cause it's curly to place it in the right position. So, I'm gonna do this very definite placing, so I don't... The good thing with the baren is that you can be really quite gentle where you press. If you think perhaps you've got the ink a little bit thick, you can start like this, and then by lifting a corner, you can see if you've got any image yet. So, I'm doing circular motion like this with the same thing with the spoon. There are many, many different things you can do with monotype. You can use this as a start and add more colour, could do multi monotypes.

There's a whole lot of different things that you can explore. This is just a basic subtractive method. It's interesting, both of these are leaving a line as if they're not pressing very evenly. Show you the other way you can do it, with a very clean roller. This is rather small, this roller, but it may be the very thing you need. Now, you can check up on yourself by just lifting a corner to see if it's printed. So, you get a nice impression. So, using the press, I've placed the plate on the registration sheet, which itself is protected under the acetate. I'm gonna place the rice paper on top of the plate, and this is a ghost print.

So, it won't have all the ink that the original print had. And I'm going to now place some protective paper over the top of this rice paper so it doesn't come through on the blanket. It's very, very thin rice paper. Very economical. Students to use for proofing. Now I'm going to roll it through the press. Hands clear, I should have yelled. Again, you can lift up a corner and see if it's printed. It's very, very light, which is why it's called a ghost print. And that's one you can then work on with pastel. You see it's actually got more detail in it 'cause it's gone through a press. There's your image.

[NSW government logo.]

[End of transcript]

[Light music plays, screen reads 'Lino plates'.]

Liz Perfect

Now you may be wondering what subject matter you're gonna use and how you're gonna transfer the image onto your plate to draw it. Many artists, including me, will just draw straight onto the plate. But if there is something specific you want to transfer, there is a way of doing it with red chalk. So, in this case, I've taken an etching which I've done previously, and I've made it into the right size for a smaller, perhaps a card to send to people. I'd do it by putting red chalk on the back just as you would have perhaps done with graphite in the past. But this is a bit easier to see.

So, I've coated the back of the photocopy of the print that I'm using. Photocopy paper's only 80 gram, so it's nice and thin to do your tracing through. I'm placing it on the lino, just hold it upside down there. And very important to use masking tape so it doesn't move while you're drawing it. And if I just hinge from the top, it's easier to see. My choice of instrument to make a drawing for lino are twofold, two choices. For a beginner, I recommend frottage, which is a rubbing of texture, or ink. And this is because it then forces the person actually to use interesting marks. It's not predictable. It forces you to generate a language with the lino. Now you get a sharp pencil or a baren, and you just draw the main parts of your composition. What you don't do is rub your hand on the drawing because then you'll just transfer a whole lot of red chalk to the board, and you won't be able to see what you're doing.

So, I've got one here that I've done earlier, and that's the red chalk on the lino so I know where to follow. This has already been cut to some extent, not completely. And in trying to find the lines to make it more definite as I'm cutting it, I've used pencil as well. Those are two materials I know can rub off. They won't affect the ink that you're gonna roll this plate out with in a moment. Red chalk and pencil. I'd like to make this lino 12 centimetres in width. So, I'm going to mark it here on the cutting board, and I'm gonna show you how to cut lino. So, I've got my metal ruler. And you just incise it with a sharp blade two or three times lightly because if you go heavy, you can slip. Now I'm going a little bit heavier because I've created a groove. And what you don't try and do with lino is to cut through the fabric on the back.

So, it's now ready to just bend. And then you use the blade to cut through the fabric on the back. Now you've got your piece of lino the right size. Now what I'm gonna do is proof this plate. In the last video, you saw that I'd made the chalk drawing on the plate. I've just cleaned the chalk off in order to see what I've got. That's really what a proof is. It's not complete, but it's to have a look at what more the plate will need. For block printing, the optimum ink to use for lino printing is oil-based ink. It really is nice and sticky, and it doesn't go into the grooves. The alternatives, however, are water-based ink. And it dries very quickly. So just be careful of using that. You can put some retarder in it. Now the object of this exercise is to coat the roller. It's not to coat this piece of glass. So, what I'm gonna do is literally, that's my little bank, that's my bank of ink. I'm gonna take some of that bank of ink and put it here. Then if I need more, I know I can go to the bank and get it. So, can you see I'm lifting up the roller? I'm lifting and replacing. It wouldn't be any good if I'm just doing this. I'm lifting the roller to make sure that the roller gets coated. The other thing I can do is turn it 'round like that. Literally just coating the roller.

Now if you're not sure what your image is like, keep it nice and thin to begin with the ink 'cause you can always add. What is a real nuisance to do is to subtract. So, it should sound like mandarin peel. Still quite quiet, but it should sound mandarin peel. Now I've known printmakers who will take 20 minutes doing copper plate. This is a gentle roll. If I press hard, I might put some of that ink in those grooves that I've just spent two hours making. So, it's a gentle roll. It may be sufficient just for you to see what the image is like to just ink it up. You don't even have to print it. If you're away from school, and you just want to have a look, and you haven't got a printer, this is showing me straight away that the bits that I still need to work on. Here and here, you're starting to see the tree evolve. It's still very thin, so I think I can get away with more ink. Again, I'm going to my bank, and I'm just putting a little bit more out. The tendency often for students is to think that the amount of ink that they've put out on the slab is the amount you use for the roller, and it's not. So, then you get the whole of the glass covered with black ink.

So, just really be aware of that, tell them to keep within this boundary. I can also roll this way. It's nice and sticky. If you don't have glass, you can just use plastic table, a plastic plate to get the ink out on. The monotype plates that I showed you in another video are perfect for inking up, and they're easy to take to the sink to wash up as well. Now your first proof, however careful you are, or keen you are, will be thin compared to the next one. It's as if the material needs to sort of get used to the fact it's gonna have sticky ink on it. It absorbs some of the ink, and it stays on for the next proof you make. Now again, I can print this just with a baren by hand, or I can print it on the printing press. As soon as I'm using the printing press, we say clean hands. So, this is the inking up area. This is the clean paper area. And likewise the press, you don't go to the press to roll the wheel with dirty hands. So, everything's got to come off. Prepare your paper ahead so there isn't a gap between this with clean hands and getting the paper. For the press, I've already made a provision for the height of the lino by using these. So, the pressure of the press has been set already. Now with lino, with relief print, you can use cartridge paper, you can use litho paper that you've got. Very, very cheap litho paper, which is this one. Or you can use a more expensive, a heavier paper. But for relief printing, a thin paper is lovely.

So, I'll put the litho paper on here. And we'll take it through. I'm gonna put a couple more sheets on top just to protect the blankets in case anything should go wrong. Okay, so now I'm smoothing the blanket on top of the print, and I'm going to roll it through. With the small presses, sometimes you need to give them a bit of help with the rolling just as you get started. Now just expect that this proof will be a little bit light 'cause it's the first one. It's just to prove to me what more carving I need to do. It's a proof. That's to protect the blanket from any ink. Now I can just lift a corner and see. Now we've got a bit of black.

So now you can see that it's a little bit speckledy, but it does give me an idea of the next bit of the plate that needs to be carved. If you were to continue with this, you would carve it again and then proof it again. You'd also register your sheet of paper in the way that I showed you with the registration sheet. To carve back into the plate, I've used an oil-based ink, so in order to clean the plate to carve it again, I'd have to use oil to remove the ink. And I've decided instead of that, I'm just gonna keep on carving in it. At the end of the day, you should remove the oil-based ink. If you've got water-based ink, you would remove it much more quickly because it dries and creates a texture on the plate itself. So, if you were proofing it with an oil-based ink with the retarder, you'd have a look at the print and then you'd clean the ink off.

[NSW government logo.]

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[Light music plays, screen reads 'Cleaning up after printing'.]

Liz Perfect

Now with pack up, it's things in reverse. The first thing to do is to look after the press. So, I'm gonna take my dirty plate off the press with its backing sheet. I'm going to remove the registration sheet from previous prints.

This is thick acetate that the registration sheet goes under, by the way. So, if you're buying a press or setting one up, that's what you need. And the next thing is I'm going to take the pressure off the press. So, when you store it at night, this is the most important thing for you to do. So, we move it so the tray's in the centre, we take the pressure off by winding these anti-clockwise, and we spread the possibly damp blankets to air. And that's the press taken care of.

Now at the end of printing, you clean up your plate, in this case, and your work area. This is warm water and soap wash-up. So, you'll be cleaning it in the sink and you'll be scraping up as much ink as you can pop back into the pot, and then cleaning this up like you did the last time. For all cleaning and printmaking and many other jobs making art, please protect your hands with gloves. It feels as if it's nothing, but the skin is an organ and it absorbs all sorts of things that we don't know yet is in the ink. They say everything's non-toxic, but just keep the ink away from your hands. Now, with this ink, it's oil-based and I'm just gonna take the excess and pop it back in there. And then for the rest, it's just gonna go onto a newspaper. And I'm gonna clean up with oil, vegetable oil. They used to clean up with turps, which is harmful to inhale. Right. Just gonna pour a bit of oil on there and then I'll gradually work it so it's clean. Cloth is very good. It's easier than kitchen towel. And it's not... It's nice and absorbing. See how important it is not to spread it all over the glass table, glass inking up or whatever area you've got your plastic inking up area. And then some of the excess can be done just with a soapy warm water and soap.

Now, the roller. Just clean the palette knife. The roller's very important to know how to clean whether you are using oil-based or water-based ink. You do not immerse the roller in water ever because that can then enter the roller in the middle. And the next thing is you're going to print and it's full of water. So always just wipe the roller either with a wet soapy sponge or like, now I'm going to do it with oil.

The roller is very easy not to clean properly at the end. So just be careful. People forget that they're actually using a three-dimensional object and they forget to clean the ends of the roller where the ink can be stuck as well. And that's how you carry on until the roller is clean. While we're here, I'd like to really recap on the lovely things that I've been through with printmaking for you. The wonderful choice of different materials, the accessibility of it, the fact that you can print by hand with a baren if you haven't got a press, the fact that it really does translate the artwork into a different medium, and you're doing something very important to learn in art which is really dealing with the materiality of the substance you're making the art with.

In lino, it's that relief plate, that carving. In drypoint, it's metal or plastic that you're carving into. you're scratching into. And planar, you can make whatever beautiful painting quite spontaneously and print that. So, thank you for your attention and it's a good start for your printmaking processes. There's masses more to do. I could go on and on, but this is a good start.

[NSW government logo.]

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