Evaluation- Relief vs Screen

This post is about considering the appropriateness of different print processes in relation to my practice. It has been a enjoyable process trying out both screen/relief printing. They both add a different finish to the quality to the lines in my work.


Although, they give a different aesthetic feel to the lines, I think both printmaking processes are viable ways of working.

Relief Printing 

Relief printing is good for black and white and works well with the 12" size that I'm currently working with. It is a tactile and handmade discipline which makes it feel more like personal form of expression. This represents the physicality of owning and collecting vinyl because people are emotionally invested in the music or genre they enjoy listening to.

It is nice how you cut out the negative of a vinyl and it prints out as positive when you put it through the press. It creates a disc shape. And by placing multiple plates together, it is possible to create a series of designs next to each other and display it as a body of work.

There are certain imperfections to relief printing, such as each print of the same plate can have subtle variations to it. Therefore, not every print is 100% identical. This may be good thematically because every time you listen to a record, you can notice things you didn't realise before. There are many layers to music, as its not flat, so each experience could be unique. Repeated listens can be rewarding for listeners.

Screen Printing

Screen is more flexible for different output size formats as you can only go up to A2 in the Albion press at Bower Ashton. My screen prints were smaller than 12" because I didn't know you could print onto multiple sheets of folex and then print them alongside next each other,

Screen would be really good if I was working with colour as its easy to create layers of translucent or opaque colour over one another which is more difficult to do in relief.

I can directly import digital scans of my drawings onto screen whereas on relief, I have to reproduce all these marks again onto the lino plate. Therefore, in this regard, it takes less time to perfect a separate craft to lino cutting as well as drawing.

Conclusion

I like the size of the relief print, but the asymmetrical shape of the screen print works better. The relief print is more structured approach with its near geometrical shape, whereas the screen print is more free. These decisions make the overall effect of the piece different from one another.

Relief print final outcome Vinyl

Following the first time I made a relief print (shown on my post: relief print of vinyl design) a lot of stylistic choices have been made since then and my work has moved forward- visually.

The lino plate I cut into

As my final outcome I've cut a lino design using the conventions I set out in my key and applied it to this design. I've layed it out differently from the first time I done it. On my first relief I had split up the tracks into quarters which separated the songs from one another. This time, I have drawn it like one continuous stream of consciousness that is linked to each other, changing and adapting shape and size to the music.

Screen printed positive / negative Vinyl

I've output my design from a scanned image onto Folex and have screen printed it today. I am very pleased with the results. This was done on Somerset Satin 300gsm. The finish of it was good quality and the blacks appear crisp.

I am happy with the end result and what the finish adds to the quality of line. It is different to the aesthetic qualities to relief printing. 

Since this is my first time, I need to think about the size of paper to print on next time. My screen prints were smaller than 12" because I didn't know you could print onto multiple sheets of folex and then print them alongside next each other,  

Also, the empty space around the print is as important as the space the print takes up. If it was in the middle of A2 paper, the vinyl will sit in a space that looks more compositionally balanced.

Scanned drawing vinyl as a series

I think instead of treating each design individually, it will look better if I present it as series of 2. They look better as a set.

I've lay them out on Photoshop. The final output will either be relief or screen based printing.

Printmaker William Kentridge Research

This is a piece of work that inspires me it is by William Kentridge from his book "A Universal Archive".

This is relevant to my practice because we have a common theme / subject matter (vinyl) and use the same medium (printmaking).

What I particularly admire about his work is the quality of line (as shown on the left), Throughout my project I've been trying to come up with different quality of line to represent music in a visual way, 

A lot of my current drawings are done in black and are on white paper. If I invert these, it will look like a black disc like in my first relief print. Kentridge's disc are negative because the lines are white in a black circle. 

I've tried 3 different ways of making a border around the design.

Inverting positive / negative vinyl

Overall, I think the freehand circle looks the best because it has a hand rendered, analogue feel to it which is consistent with the way I did the pattern. It seems to match it better. By going with the geometric circle, I think it will conflict with the irregularity of it. I've decided to make it freehand so theres not much point trying to disguise it. 

Geometric circle 

Drawn with circular marquee tool.

Irregular circle 

Tutorial feedback with tutor 5/04/16

On Tuesday  I met with my tutor Stephen and the overall feedback was quite positive. He said I had improved since last year and that I have been more focused.  I have a coherent body of work (drawings) this year but last year I was a bit unsure with how to proceed with my "punk subculture" project.

He said that my sktechbook was special and unique and nobody else has these exact drawings or does them in the exact same way.

However, there are still things to consider and he given me some good ideas. I still have some research left to do. A artist that I should find more out about is William Kentridge.

I'm planning to lino cut my final peice and/.or screen print them as a series. I would like to display positive/negative series next to each other to represent a A and B side. I think they will look good in sets of 2 or 4.

A body of work.

I think instead of treating each design individually, it will be better if I present it as a body of work so I went to Bower Ashton on Thursday to scan all my work and I printed them out. I've stuck my drawings onto the wall. I feel this gives a good overall perspective of all my drawings and I can easily compare them alongside each other. It's about living with my work, and by seeing them each day allows me to reflect upon it and to generate new ideas.

Further design considerations?

There is still decisions to be made, for example I haven't considered yet what sort of paper to use quite yet and how the audience is going to view them. I feel this is something I could consider in Extended Practice module. Will it be something that they buy or is it something they see on the wall? And how should it be displayed ?

I hope that further down the line, I will be able to answer some of these questions.

Key to working with line and producing EP pieces.

After practising a lot of times daily visualising tracks from Sergeant Peppers and drawing them, I have devised a strategy for how to organise the information I have gathered. Each song seemed to have a different line appearance so I've marked down what they looked like each one. (the drawing I took them from were: developing a continuous line style )

Using my key as a reference point, I produced these drawings of multi track EP drawings: 

I really like the chaotic and gestural line in "Fixing a hole", it gives it more energy.

11 Track EP Sergeant Peppers

This piece based on Seargant Peppers Hearts Club album. I used a compass to draw out 11 rings and within each ring would be a abstracted representation of each song. I tried to use a different quality of line to describe each track.

As I got into the centre the circle got smaller and smaller and there was less room to work with. Overall I prefer the free hand drawings better because it doesn't feel like it flows as well. It was a good experiment but not the way forward as I feel it lacks energy. 

11 Track or 5 ?

Up until now I've just been making EP's based on a selection of 4-5 songs that I felt well particularly strong visually. On the other hand, when I did 11 tracks, some of the lines looked weaker and didn;t have as much variation or contrast. .I think I am going to stick with what I was doing before because 4-5 good lines are better than doing 11 with over half of them looking weaker than the latter.

Developing continuous line style II

I keep practising drawing new designs often but there are some drawings that end up being something that I don't even like. Instead of throwing them away, I think it's good to look at them and think about why aren't they successful and what I can do to make them better.

This post is about what I've learnt from drawing them.

This piece didnt work because of the outer border. It throws it off and looks unfitting. 

The designs lead the eye to the middle because of the spiral shape.Therefore, when the "hole" becomes misplaced, it becomes very obvious to the viewer of the mistake. I need to put the hole at the end instead of planning to put it in the center before I draw the spiral.

Developing a continuous line style

By building upon what I had done with my initial line drawings in the blog post: continuous line drawings of Beatles Songs I plan to develop this further by concentrating on line and the quality of line.

Below is a image of one of many drawings I did with a brush pen. They look quite messy and the line is a bit all over the place. 

After doing many of these, I decided to move onto finer line and what I can do to make it look like a pattern whilst maintaining a continuous line throughout. This is a drawing of the Beatles song: Getting Better. 

At the moment my style is freehand, I'm not worried about making it perfectly circular. I think the looseness of it will help express the flow of music better.

Investigating vinyl and considering the appropriateness of continuous line

So I bought my own Vinyl from Fopp the other day of Hot Chips "Why Make Sense" and I was quite excited about opening it. It even had a free mp3 download code so I can collect the physical Vinyl and listen to it (without buying a Vinyl player)

I took some pictures. Due to the size of it, it felt tactile and that I really own something whereas if I just downloaded it from Itunes, it would just be something that's on your computer that you easily forget about.

I was interested in looking at the grooves in the vinyl. I know we take it for granted, but in a way it's like magic how these indentations on this surface can actually produce music that's a feast for the ears. I wonder how the grooves translate into different sounds. 

Another thing I realised were there were some more solid grooves that divide the smaller grooves into "sets". 

Figurative to Abstraction ?

So I have two approaches, drawing with continuous line or using pictorial representation. Pictorial is more about illustrating the lyrics and telling a story with them. On the other hand, the more abstract approach is continuous line which is about translating what the sound would look like by altering the quality of line. For example, loopy lines? jagged lines? pointy lines? big lines? small lines? 

I think continuous lines work better because they capture the essence of music more effectively. The continuous line represents the grooves that go round and round indefinitely.  The same set of lines are echoed throughout the drawing each time the same beat is repeated in the song. But at the same time as the song reaches different interludes, intros' and outros, its like a energy that is constantly changing. 

Adding texture to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

I tried experimenting with mark making and using it to shade each section. I wanted to see if it worked like tone instead of using colour.

I made the background black (like it would in a relief print) to contrast it against the white space. Close up there is variation in the marks but loking at it from a distance, it doesn't seem to work very well at all.

It's not a very good fit, so I think I'l try experiment with something else. 

Pictorial Designs of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

Following my last post, I thought I try applying colour to Lucy in the sky with Diamonds building upon my previous design shown in Pictorial sketches of Beatles Songs

The darker colours seem to not work as well as Good Morning, the lines get a bit lost. 

Pictorial Designs of "Good Morning"

These series of sketches depict Good Morning as a pictorial Vinyl design. Elements that make up this are loopy lines, dashed lines, curved lines, wavy lines as well as cartoon suns, clouds, stick figures, birds etc. It kind of resembles something you'll find on a plate or something...

After this I questioned "Does this need to be symmetrical?". It doesn't have to be. So I tried doing the same design asymmetrically. It looks like a narrative, like a little story is being told about someone's morning.  

Adding Colour

Continuous line drawings of Beatles songs

In this approach I use continuous line to describe what the each of the Beatles tracks would look like. It is like a stream of consciousness in a way. The quality of line changes to how the track gets louder or quieter, or to the rhythm/pace of it.

In fixing a hole, the line looks warped because I felt the song sounded psychedelic and hypnotic. However, this could have been a pre-conception I had about it before I listened to it, therefore this design maybe cliché-d  

Pictorial sketches of Beatles songs

These are the first out of a series of sketches, I'm trying to interpret what Sergant Peppers would look like if it was graphical. I'm translating something that is sound into something that is pictorial. I was listening to each track while I was abstracting them into line / shape/ icons.

I have come across two different ways of working.

Pictorial 

When listening to some of these tracks, certain icons came to mind and I drew what I could see in my minds eye. Some of these are from lyrics,or a geometric shape that represents the mood of the song.

This one is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I drew diamond shapes as diamonds, for some reason I drew eyes. Not entirely sure why there are leaves and almond shapes though.

For Good Morning, I drew things that fit into the theme of a brand new sunny day. Such as clouds, sunshine, wavy lines and sounds such as barking or a Rooster

This song When I'm Sixy Four which is about growing old with someone special. I actually had quite a lot of fun with this one. I drew kisses and hearts because the song was about a woman. This gave it a certain sense of naivety to it which adds to the charm. 

This one looks quite different from the rest of them. To me, it reminds me of the beach for some reason.

And I will be covering the continuous line sketches in my next post...

Relief Print of Vinyl Design

I've finished my first relief print of my vinyl design, it took so many test runs but got one im happy with now.

This is based on Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts band, each 1/4 represents a visualisation of track 1-4.

I think it's worked out quite well. The inverted black and white color's from the lino make it look like a Vinyl.

I plan to do some more designs by visualising the music as lines (energy essentially) and to develop them. When I come up with a more resolved design I will either Lino cut them or to transfer them onto Screen print. 

Vinyl background and contextural Research

Prior to the 1950's, the 12 inch Vinyl was a format that allowed artistic expression and visual experimentation. The size of it gave designers a lot of room to work on. For instance, there is an incredible amount of detail in Sergeant Peppers Club artwork.

After 1985, compact discs as we all know took over and Vinyl started appearing in junk sales or charity shops. The smaller canvas was more limiting to work for designers to make album artwork on. The cover sleeve became more commercialised as it was managed by publicity departments in record companies who concentrated on revenue from album sales. Often large obtrusive stickers covered up the cover art. The cover sleeve became a marketing surface rather than a medium used to as artistic expression. 

This is why I am interested in cover work and making work based on music. It's about bringing back the emotion to visual communication of music. 

"Most people buy records because they are emotionally or artiscally engaged by them and the sleeve plays an important part in formulating this response"

 - Sampler: Contemporary Music Graphics.

What is your work about

In this project I want to explore printmaking processes such as Relief printing, letterpress, Lithography and Screen printing. (not all, those are the possibilities) And experiment with different visual elements such as: pattern, texture, process color printing, black and white printing, monochrome printing etc.

An Exploration of Graphic Art and the visual language associated with music culture

Developing Practice Revised brief.

I've rewritten my proposal for this module to make it more clear and focused. My last proposal was a bit too broad / open ended.


What is your work about?
I want to find out how I can re-invent old retrospective processes and use it to make a new comment that is contextually relevant about the present.

What is your area of graphic arts, what is it about this area that most interests you?
I want to develop a greater understanding of the visual processes, language and aesthetic associated with print making, to underpin and compliment my digital skills. I see this as being essential to my ability to work and design in the future.

Who are the practitioners that influence you? How and why?
I am interested in print making and book making: I will need to identify what the classic album covers are and who designed them.

How does the study you are proposing relate to your ambitions beyond graduation?
The study I propose to do will help me by giving me a strong portfolio of work and the ability to use different media.

Define what the theme/question of your study/project will be

Can you capture the essence of album covers using color, pattern and texture? Is it possible to “distil” the visual language of a genre? 

For example, an abstract depiction of the Hippie genre could be a sun. Or Black Sabbath's music can be represented by pointy triangles and a little circle can suggest an impending sense of doom. 

Schedule