Printing Tuesday!

Yesterday I was doing prints based on a photo I took (see it here). The route I've decided to go down is to explore the themes of suburbia and dullness - those boring houses and having nothing to do. After doing several thumbnails this was the image I decided to focus on. I was doing mono-prints again because this has been really working for me and I'm trying to refine my use of it further. I'm getting more complicated every time I try it, until I get really good at it. It's also because I've been looking at the work of print artist John Hinchcliffe, who uses one colour mono-printing to great effect (see below). I want to emulate his bold but detailed style using the same method, although I'll be trying out with both one and two colour prints.

Months of the Year, John Hinchcliffe.

Mono-printing also suits the bold, graphic, flat style I'm trying to achieve, inspired by the work of Sheffield printmakers Jonathan Wilkinson and James Green. 

Doing the stencil was super fiddly! Here's the stencil I made. I think it looks really good in itself. I like the mix of block colour and line. I'm definitely going to do some proper work with this in mind, using collage and pencil or fineliner.

Here's the first one-colour print. I think it looks good as it is as a really simple striking design.

I added an extra dimension to it by collaging with brown paper. The original plan was going to be to just print this on but I decided to try this out as well. It gives a nice muted effect. I'm now going to experiment with adding more colour to it, probably with the oil painting method.

Here's the printed version. I think it works really well because it's very bold and the limited colours contrast with each other well. However I decided to try it with a different colour palette to see how it turned out. 

So I did a different version of the original stencil in orange. Because the stencil already had black ink on it this made an interesting effect. It's good how it adds texture and depth to the image in a subtle way.

I then added pink to the orange base. I think this colour scheme also works really nicely. It's more vibrant and cheerful than the black and orange. It doesn't have the same level of contrast though, which I suppose can either be a good or bad thing depending on the situation.

I now want to experiment with adding text to my prints, to add to the design and also the concept.

Contrasts

So I was walking my dog around my area and just thinking about how weird some of the architectural and social juxtapositions are. These are all photographs taken of houses on the exact same road but with some big differences between them. Some of the most expensive houses in the city are combined with local authority housing. These are houses that reflect each other while at the same time contrasting hugely. I wanted to combine images together to illustrate this and the different every day lives of people living in very close proximity.

They're just iPod pictures so they're not great quality but at this stage it's more about the idea and the combination of images than the images themselves.

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I like how the two trees mirror each other in this set of photos. It adds a sense of flow, while the actual buildings are really different to each other. Having the images different sizes adds interest.

I put these two images together because I felt the triangular roofs echoed each other, whilst again the buildings themselves are completely different in style. 

 I took these two because they're both bungalows but completely different in style. They look pretty boring together though.

 These were two houses right next to each other that contrast. However although they are completely different eras and styles, their overall shape and silhouette sort of mirrors each other which I thought was interesting. I wonder if this is coincidence or if it was intended by the architect of the second house. Anyway it shows a kind of coherence through time. They're very grey photos together though.


I want to continue looking at this theme. Firstly by taking more and better photos - probably with a camera this time. I could work towards making a photobook or something. I could also work with drawing houses. As well as this I could follow the idea of contrast and similarity by drawing over the photographs on acetate or tracing paper or other translucent medium so that both aspects can be seen at the same time. I could also try drawing with sewing over the top.