Well, I found the blog page! It took some doing. I promised Wendy Mason I would post again. What a lovely lady she is. She came to UCLan to see what we were doing and ended up in the print room watching Leighton and myself printing. We had a lovely chat about art and how AA2A has helped my practice. I discovered it's rather difficult explaining the excitement of reticulation when the other person has no idea what you are on about, but Wendy rose to the challenge and was very interested.

By the way, the reticulation is going extremely well... I can get, in one hour now, what took me a whole day to achieve in October! The secret, I will tell, (but only to you), is in the copper plate oil... oooh, it makes such a difference when you sprinkle white spirit onto the plate.

I'll try to get my photos on my thingy whatsit, but please don't hold your breath, you may go blue and pass out! I will however, post them. Some of them are actually (surprisingly) amazing!

By the way, I have 90 prints on the go now.

Found the time to write the blog! Well, an interesting week last week, I started more prints and had some interesting first layers, I used a squidge of black intaglio ink onto a plate then used a broken stick to try to drip the ink onto the printing plate. It was a bit thick and sticky (no pun intended) so didn't drip how I wanted, but it was interesting. I softened the ink on the second run through the press with white spirit which gave a reasonable base when on the paper. Photos to follow.

Well, this is going to be interesting... can't access the training video from home, it won't work on my apple. I'll wing it for the time being. I've started my printing, and currently got one completed (I like it so much, I'll not add to it) and 14 prints in various stages of completion PLUS loads of ideas for more. The paper situation is being resolved slowly, so in the meantime, I'm using 100cmx70cm, 250gsm smooth cartridge paper. I do like the somerset newsprint but it will work out too expensive as I'm making large prints. The GF Smith paper 135gsm is too thin, the oil in the ink seeps through to the back so I think the 175 will be more appropriate. I'm adding some photos - if i can.

Been trying to find the perfect paper for my monoprints. Spent hours searching the net, but I think I've found some from GF Smith in Hull. They sent me two pieces of cartridge paper (and a sample book for free) to try, and I printed today. The paper is 135gsm which is a bit thin for the amount of ink I used as the oil in the ink seeped right through to the back. I think 175gsm will be better, but it will be more expensive. White 250gsm cartridge is perfect, but I'm looking for a colour to match the somerset newsprint I love so much. GF Smith have a cartridge called MIST which matches the colour very closely, watch this space for more details... BTW, the prints were fabulous! Will photograph them and post soon.