Introduction
It dawned on me as I was reading through this chapter that I had in fact gone completely off course in the last activity of chapter 5, so I had to rectify the situation and get lots more gessoed papers together.
Getting under way I made two separate lots of letters, all out of funky foam, which was great to use as it was very easy to cut and also printed very well, I made a number of letters in hand written uncial 'magiscule' and also a range of asemic letters and letters/symbols from other written scripts such as Amharic and Devanagari. I glued these on to card and sealed them. While I was wating for them to dry I tried out a few other printing options. I made a print roller and also tried out some resist printing with letters.
Rewarding Diversion
In between Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 I took some time out to look into calligraphy which I have become increasingly interested in in the course of this module to date. I printed some gessoed newspaper using a gelli plate, wrote on these in various calligraphic styles, then ripped them up and sewed them together. I made a number of really very interesting things including a couple of 'Calligraphy' quilts. One of which is shown below.
Print Roller
Denise Lach, in her book on world journeys in Calligraphy, made a roller with letters and printed with it. I was taken with this idea and just had to have a go. Of course I completely forgot to take pictures of the roller in its pristine condition. I used letters 'e', 'o', 't', 'g'. I got some quite interesting results and may come back to this idea again
In strips, leaving a gap between each roll
Again in strips, with different colours, and also working a little with the spaces between the letters:
Covering a page all over with repeated rollings:
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| newspaper, gesso, gelli plate printed base |
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| Acrylic red printed base - has a chinese look to it |
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| newspaper, gesso mixed with acrylic base |
Layering the roller darker on top of light:
Using the roller to fill in one of the pages I made for the previous Chapter
Printing using letters as a resist
As I said, it took a while for the letters I actually made for this chapter to stick then seal - about a day was advised on the instructions for the sealer, and as the smell was appalling I shifted my base of operations to the kitchen and made use of paper letters.A single layer of resist. The first go revealed I hadn't made enough letters.
Another go using more letters
Using two layers. A printed base then another layer with the letters added to the second layer:
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| Pale on darker |
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| changing the colour but keeping the tone the same |
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| pale on dark, didn't work very well
Trying three layers with resists on both the second and the third layer. This could probably have worked better:
Finally, having a go with brusho powder. I bought brusho powder fairly recently and have to say I've not managed to produce much with it that's got any value. This wasn't a bad idea, using letters in this way but of course they didn't need to be reversed!!!!!
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Printing with Letters
Finally down to business. So I made the letters as described in my introduction and did a quick printing on layout paper to see how they all looked. I think really they were a bit on the large size but I liked the letters. I initially wrote the letters with a wide poster nib in uncial upper case/magiscule directly on the foam.
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| Character on lower left comes from the Amharic script used in Ethiopia, it is very reminiscent of hieroglyphics |
Then layering up the letters
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| Gelli plate printed base, white layer, silver layer then black. This looks really much better in actuality as the silver shines quite nicely |
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| Gesso base, pale blue, dark blue, red then orange
Printing odd letters on a base made for Chapter 5
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Printing randomly with asemic script
Creating patterns
Working with the base
Making use of left over bits and pieces
I forgot to photograph one of the pieces I used for this
