21 February 2007

More Fun With Xacto Blades

I want to somehow show "particles" in the air above this landscape. I don't want to get all technical about it, like trying to show carbon and oxygen and how it all interacts with each other -- that's beyond me. But I want to suggest several different kinds of particles, maybe interacting with each other, flying around in the air. 

Because the blue I already printed is pretty deep (see previous post), I've decided to use water-based intaglio inks for their opacity. Rather than cut blocks for the particles, I'm attempting to create them with stencils on a plain block. So I got some acetate and took out my trusty xacto knife to make some stencils.

 

Here's the stencil positioned on the block: 

 
 
It seemed to me that rolling ink onto the stencil would be too messy; all I could picture was the stencil lifting up as the roller went over it and having to hold it down and getting my hands all inky and then getting fingerprints on the paper. Yuck. So I decided to brush the ink on. Didn't want to use my moku hanga brushes with intaglio ink, though, so I got a craft store stencil brush to try for the inking. 
 
 
Here's the block with the stencil removed, ready to receive the first piece of paper: 
 
And here's a stack of printed sheets. More "particles" to come... 

 

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