A new acquisition

I just acquired an etching press last week and I am printing to my heart's content without having to be at the mercy of printmaking workshop hours and lines waiting to use presses.

It is taking me some time to figure out how to set up my studio in a way to make the printmaking process go as efficiently as possible. But I am well on my way to getting it all down and hopefully, I will start creating editions (and unique prints) with the ease and speed that I could never achieve in a public workshop. While I am in the midst of this studio transition, my posting to this blog may be a bit sporadic in the coming weeks. But I plan to be posting regularly after that with new work and new insights into the processes I am currently exploring as well as the ones I have yet to discover.

Experimenting with brayers

I'm planning to get more involved with monoprinting and I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of effects I can get just by using a brayer loaded with color. I had started a bit of this while working on some woodcuts (as seen with the gourd print) and I am fascinated with the process of combining monoprint painting on a woodcut plate as well as on the customary plexiglass plate.

My friend and mentor, Bruce Waldman creates amazing monoprints with a variety of textures and techniques but he draws the images with the edge of his brayer. The line is so expressive and there is movement and energy in every one of his monoprints. I have been awed by the mastery, spontaneity and strength of the lines in Bruce's monoprint work and when he told me that it was done with the edge of a brayer, I was amazed and inspired.

The thought of the use of brayers to draw and make marks on a plate has opened up many possibilities for future work in my mind. Not just for working with brayers but for using all kinds of tools to create textures and lines even if that was not what they were originally designed for. It is yet another example of how versatile and flexible printmaking is. The seemingly endless possibilities lead to yet more possiblities. So much to try, so little time.