Testing the press!

Last month when I was home alone for over a week, I took the opportunity to finally test my new press, which I excitedly wrote about here and here. I hadn’t used my printing inks in a couple of years and a bit of water was added to them to prevent them from totally hardening up. I did not mix the coloured inks properly with the result that I used them either too wet or too dry. This does not work for monoprints, which is what I had decided to create.

I took over the kitchen as a workspace as the table is suitable, and there is running water. Here is the plate for the print that is too wet. While I could tell from the way the ink was lifting (most noticeable here in the middle), I printed it anyway to see what it would look like. The results were predictably unsuitable.

I liked the colour, which was a Speedball emerald green block ink mixed with a touch of black, so I attempted the image again. This time I knew the ink was too dry for printing and it was taking me too long to create the image. Once again, I printed it anyway to see what would happen and the results again were unacceptable to me.

My first print off the press, in fact, had been a black ink test of the same image (a view through a window of a stone building ruin). Although I realised I had over-inked the plate, so details would be lost, I was actually pleased with the atmospheric nature of the print.

Valentia View, monoprint on Fabriano paper, image size: 15cm x 20cm, paper size: 24cm x 28cm, 2025

Never one to waste work on good paper, I created cards from the two green prints by using the areas of the prints that I thought were fine.

For the cards themselves, on which I glued the monoprint sections, I used rejected linoprints from a few years ago that were on Tiepolo paper!