I was working on a book project and had to ink up the press to print a single page(!) I had missed somehow, so I decided to piggyback a card project with the page. But, of course, I had to print some background colors first with a fresh linoleum block. Afternoon tan and purple dawn on white cotton printmaking paper, and then simply the engravings on tan cotton printmaking paper, each with the deckle intact on the front.
An intermingling of projects, these. I had wanted to make cards anyway. The engravings are from a book I did in 1998, called, The Golden Beak, from my drawings. Photos and instructions on how to make the structure are in my 2001 instructional book, Unique Handmade Books.
With the cards you can see all of the bird and cat drawings at once. The cards are up at nevermindtheart, links at cat and bird, if you like.
With the cards you can see all of the bird and cat drawings at once. The cards are up at nevermindtheart, links at cat and bird, if you like.
old style zinc engravings
Comments
We once did a zinc plate in 2 layers. So like yours but then add another round of protective stuff and put it back in the acid bath.
We then rolled each layer with its own roller. So three consecutive rollers on one plate, before printing.
Each roller had a different firmness so the first roller would hit the deepest layer and ink it and a next roller would not get as deep and would only hit the second and top layer and ink those.
You could only move each roller once across the plate, as it would pick up ink from the layers it reached.
That is why we also used different viscosity of the inks, so the second and third roller would leave more of their ink on the topmost layers than they picked up. I forgot if this needs more fluid ink or less fluid ink.
So three layers, three rollers, three viscosities. One plate rolled three ways and only then printed. This way there's no need to registrar and lines are perfect next to each other.
It was amazing. It was a course at Bergen, Norway, academy.
The closest I've gotten to it is inking up the letterpress and then going in by hand with a brayer and second or third color before printing, but harder to do this way as the rollers then pick up the other colors and work it in if you don't disengage the rollers often. So many ways to print!