Finding the Right Image

While I’ve been setting and printing the text for the book, Lynn has been busy with working with photos, maps and other visual material for us to include in the book.

It’s tricky finding just the right images, as well as the right size and color. The subject and text don’t call for the kind of layering and playful treatment we both tend to do in our own work, but we’re learning a lot reigning it in! It’s good for me to see that I can successfully (so far) work on a project that’s not centered around humor.

Also, because of our time constraints, we’re having to be very decisive very quickly. It can be a bit nerve racking at times and poor Donald or Rhian sometime walk in right in the middle of one of our moments of waffling and fretting. Sometimes bringing us snacks helps.

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Lynn is amazing with the solar plates she’s been making. She tests sizes with transparencies on our mock up of the book. She tests exposure times  and makes multiple plates to make sure she gets JUST the right image.

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She’s using a few different kinds of plates. Some are similar (or maybe the same) as the polymer plates we use for letterpress/relief printing. Some are greener and more flexible.

The plates are created by placing a transparency (a negative to create a relief plate and a positive to create an intaglio plate) over a light sensitive sheet of plastic. Then the transparency and plate is exposed to UV light. Everywhere that doesn’t get hit with UV light is the washed out with water, leaving a plate with either a raised surface where the image is or a groove where the image is (depending on whether you were aiming for a relief or intaglio process).

Here are some of the transparencies, tools and resultant prints1 IMG_1046

We really liked this map that Rhian worked with before, but the image wasn’t crisp or in high enough contrast to make a good plate of it.                       2 IMG_1045

Then Lynn found this map of Mt Cook and the Southern Alps. It worked perfectly!

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She printed the plate as an intaglio—meaning she covered the plate in ink, so the ink would get into the grooves of the image. This is actually a picture of her working on a plate other than the map, but you get the idea.

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Then she wiped the excess ink away—leaving a just enough to give the map the look of dirt and age—and ran the plate through the etching press with dampened paper. It came out great! And about 160 times too! The map is the front paste down for the book.

This is how Lynn exposes the plates. It’s a huge, very strong light bulb. In this photo she’s re-exposing a plate after washing it out. This hardens the plate and keeps it from breaking down during the printing process.

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Here’s an intaglio plate, inked up, wiped and ready to print. This is a plate from a photo that will be the back paste down for the book.

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Here’s a few plates and a registration set up on the press.

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Just can’t get enough of all the stacks of prints. Just look at all those Fredas! They were also printed as intaglios.

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A few more prints. The book is going to be great!

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3 thoughts on “Finding the Right Image

  1. I use a few different plates – the green flexible one is my favourite, Toboyo Printight brand. This plate is made for relief printing but by exposing it to a dot matrix screen I can trick it into working as an intaglio plate too. I am still getting used to the other plate I am trying out, a yellow/gold plate by Kodak. By ‘used to’ I mean the exposure timings – different brands require different exposures. One of the difficulties is getting a differentiation of tone in intaglio plates – the light tones can burn out in the pursuit of making the shadows not too dark. So, ummmm, lots of printing out of transparencies of art work in different densities for test plates. (Minor concern yesterday when my supplier shop said ‘we have run out of transparencies but will be getting more in sometime.’ Deep breaths.) Lots of plate making, lots of learning, lots of fun.

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