A weekend plan for learning from printmaking mistakes

What to take away

• Causing a fault deliberately is the fastest way to learn to recognize it in a real print.
• Do this with ink and paper only. Never run deliberate failure experiments with chemistry.
• Push each variable past the point of failure, not just to the edge of it.
• The output is a labeled reference set, not a stack of prints you would show anyone.

Saturday: mechanical and material faults

Cut thirty small sheets and carve or borrow one simple block. Then work through the list, changing one thing at a time and labeling every sheet as it comes off.

1. Ink film from far too thin to far too thick, six steps.
2. Pressure from too little to too much, five steps.
3. Paper from hard and unsized to soft and absorbent, four papers.
4. Block held loose, then clamped, to see what movement looks like.
5. A block deliberately not cleaned between colors, to learn what contamination looks like.

Write the variable and the setting on each sheet in pencil while it is still on the bench. Sheets labeled afterward get mislabeled.

Sunday: procedural and environmental faults

1. Print onto a damp sheet, a conditioned sheet and a bone-dry sheet.
2. Stack two prints face to face before they are dry, to produce offsetting on purpose.
3. Register a second color with no jig, then with a jig, then with a jig you deliberately shift.
4. Leave one sheet overnight unweighted and one under board, to see cockling.

By Sunday afternoon you will have around forty labeled examples, which is a better fault reference than any published chart because the paper, ink and press are yours.

Push each variable past failure rather than stopping at the edge of it. A ladder that ends just before the ink fills in tells you where the limit might be; one that runs two steps beyond it shows you exactly what crossing the limit looks like, which is the thing you need to recognize later.

Where the exercise stops

Do not run this with chemistry. Deliberately mixing, overexposing or contaminating a sensitizer produces material you then have to dispose of, and unused product discarded from a studio is a different category from a spoiled print. The federal rules list discarded commercial chemical products, off-specification species and container residues as their own class of hazardous waste, which is exactly what a failed chemical experiment generates.

Learn chemical faults by reading, by asking a tutor, and by running a properly designed single test strip. That is the one part of printmaking where the deliberate failure method is the wrong tool.

Filing the results

Store the labeled sheets flat in a folder by variable, not by day. Keep them somewhere pests cannot reach, because a fault reference set is exactly the kind of stored paper that attracts them.

The National Archives advice on dealing with insects is worth following here: get accurate identification from an agricultural extension service or an entomologist, avoid fumigation, which can permanently damage records, and address the source of the infestation by sealing entry points instead.

Turning it into a habit

Repeat the ink film ladder whenever you change ink, and the paper panel whenever you change paper. Everything else can stay as a one-time reference.

Our taxonomy of print faults explains how to name what you produced, and our weekend printing plan is the version of this exercise aimed at making finished work rather than references.

Common questions

Is this a waste of paper? No. Thirty small sheets of cheap stock cost less than one ruined edition.

Should I photograph the results? Yes, once, in raking and flat light, so the reference survives the paper.

Can I do this with a borrowed press? Yes, and it is a good use of a booked session, because you learn that specific machine.

How often should I repeat it? Fully, once a year. Partially, whenever a material changes.