Promotional Postcard Packaging

Andy showed this GF Smith postcard holder to Sadie,
 its made from one sheet
of paper folded down with no binding or glue used.
 It is pretty impressive!

This is another postcard holder, this one uses binding and has little
windows so you can see what the postcard is of. This is probably
the type of thing we will make for the Inpress postcards.

Pattern Ideas for Tote Bags

I am designing and printing on tote bags for our inpress show next weekend,
I am not too sure what I want to put on them though, some sort of repeating pattern but I don't know if I want to look at shape or illustration, I need to 
consider colours and how long it will take to print them.
These are some designs I found that I liked the look of, so something along these
lines.

News Paper Bags

We are wanting to use newspaper paper bags at our event for people
to take their prints home in. We want to use newspaper and it is sustainable as
we will be recycling old newspaper. To keep in line with our promotion
we are going to screenprint our logo over the top of the bags.

Newspaper Printing

We are using newspaper for our packaging for our event and also our
posters are based on a newspaper style, using newsprint as stock and printing
the text over greyscale images.
These are a few designs of the type of thing we want to do. We are using newspaper
to be sustainable, using old papers to make our packaging, which fits in with 
the poo paper we used for our branding.

Arrache Toi Un Oei

Arrache-toi un oil! is a duo consisting of Emy Rojas and 
Gaspard Le Quiniou who specialized in screen printing,
graphic design and illustration. They both live and work in Paris.
They do screen printing for all different things, including gig
posters, t-shirts, records and flyers.
This is the type of screen printing I would like to be producing,
looking at using multiple colours and detailed illustration.
http://www.arrachetoiunoeil.com/

Chapman Brother Etchings

These are some etchings by the Chapman brothers, some are altered
versions of Goyas etchings and some are from the exquisite corpse
series.
I am wanting to do some etchings for the Inpress event based on 
my elephant illustrations.
I am going to go down to Vernon Street and ask Neil to help
me make a copper plate so I can try etching for myself.

Making an etching plate

Preparing And Etching A Copper Plate

This is one of the plates I'm working on at the moment. You may recognise the drawing from my earlier post of bird sketches. I decided I wanted to follow my drawing fairly closely so I photocopied it onto trace paper.

I then placed the plate of copper under the trace to figure out the position of the bird on the plate. This is needed for registration later on.

Recently I salvaged a lot of copper from the copper bin, nice big plates of it, already used but I can use the backs of them. BUT it takes a lot of cleaning! I bought an electric sander to get the worst of the marks off. Gradually using finer and finer grade sand paper. I then go onto wet and dry paper and sand by hand.
Finally, after much sanding, I use brasso and crocus powder to polish up the plate surface. The more polished the surface the whiter the background of your print. Any scratches will show up when you come to print so you have to be very careful.

I have to then degrease the plate in preparation for putting on the ground. I use a degreasing spray and whiting powder and work it into the plate with a rolled up old piece of felt blanket. You have degreased when water sits across the whole surface of the plate and doesn't creep in at the edges.

Now for the hot plate and the ground. Ground is a waxy substance you put on the plate which protects it from the acid. You draw into the ground and where you draw it exposes the copper so when you put it in the acid it eats only where you have made marks in the ground.

There are two sorts of ground, soft ground and hard ground. Soft ground is very sensitive, for example if you put your finger on a plate with soft ground it will leave your finger print, this will not happen with hard ground. Soft ground gives a soft etched line, it prints like a soft pencil mark whereas hard ground gives a very precise neat line, like a fine liner pen.

For this plate I have applied soft ground first. It helps me recreate my drawing as you will see, and gives a good variety of line in the final print.

Plate with applied soft ground

I now place the trace paper carefully on top of the plate and trace some of the lines.

I don't want to trace all the lines because the soft ground will just be a starter. The main lines will be done in hard ground.

Also I must mention that the back of the plate is protected with either stop out varnish or sticky back plastic so the acid doesn't eat into the back and exhaust itself.

I then place the plate into the acid bath. The acid is ferric chloride. Soft ground doesn't seem to take as long in the acid bath as hard ground, I left it in for 10 mins max.

Always keep an eye on the clock!

A bit of turps on the plate will take off the ground and I can see the soft ground lines etched into the plate.

I then want to apply my hard ground so the plate has to be degreased again and brought over to the hot plate.

Hard ground is much easier and nicer to apply than soft ground, it's also less stressful because it doesn't mark so easily!

Then, looking at my original drawing, I scratch the rest of the lines into the ground freehand with an etching needle.
Ready for the acid. This time I'll leave it in for longer, about 25 mins. The amount of time you leave a plate in the acid depends on a few things. How deep you want the etch, how old is the acid etc.

Again I use turps to clean off the ground to reveal the final etched plate.

Now the plate's edges need to be filed to a 45º angle. If you don't do this the square edges of the plate can cut into the paper and ruin your print. And finally I burnish the edges to give a really smooth finish and a clean edge to your print when you come to print.

In printmaking there are many ways to do things, this is just one example. It's like my mum always told me about cooking, there are many ways to come to the same result!

Soon I will show a step by step 'how to' about printing from the plate.