Features
Part of An honest review of printmaking supplies
Six short projects that build one printmaking skill at a time
Six short projects that each build one material handling skill, from mixing to a target color to sizing paper and degreasing a screen properly.
What to take away
- These projects build handling skill with materials. They are not drawing exercises and the results are not artworks.
- Decide the protective equipment before you mix anything, based on the hazards the material actually has.
- Mixed-material objects age unevenly, which is worth knowing before you combine media in finished work.
- Each project produces a physical reference you keep, not a print you show.
Assess before you mix
The workplace method is worth copying. The general rule on personal protective equipment requires a hazard assessment of the workplace first, with equipment then selected to fit the hazards found, and it requires that equipment be maintained and fitted properly rather than simply present.
Bench hazard assessment
- What can splash?
- What can be breathed?
- What can be absorbed through skin?
- Answers pick gloves and eye protection
- Sometimes move the project elsewhere
Applied to a bench, that is three questions before each project. What can splash, what can be breathed, and what can be absorbed through skin. The answers pick the gloves and the eye protection, and they sometimes tell you to do the project somewhere else.
The six projects
- Mix to a target color.Take a swatch you already own and reproduce it from three inks plus white. Record every weight. Teaches that color mixing is arithmetic, not intuition.
- The transparent base ladder.One ink at five ratios with transparent base, printed on the same paper. Teaches how much base is too much.
- Size a sheet.Apply a light gelatin or starch size to unsized paper and print the same block on treated and untreated halves. Teaches what sizing does.
- Degrease a screen properly.Coat, expose and wash a screen after a proper degrease, then repeat without one. Teaches why emulsion fails.
- Weigh a stock solution.Mix a simple solution by weight, then by volume, and compare results across three attempts. Teaches repeatability.
- Drying time chart.Same ink, five papers, timed to touch dry and to handling dry. Teaches how to plan a session.
Each takes one session. Run them in this order, because the later ones assume the record-keeping habits the earlier ones build.
Six projects, one skill each
- Mix to a target color
- Transparent base ladder
- Size a sheet
- Degrease a screen properly
- Weigh a stock solution
- Drying time chart
Keep the outputs as reference
The results belong in the swatch book built during our weekend materials audit, filed by variable. A ratio ladder pinned above the bench answers a question in two seconds that would otherwise cost a wasted pull.
Label each output with the date and the exact quantities. A ladder without ratios written on it is a pretty strip of paper.
Combining media, and why it matters later
Projects three and four both change the substrate, and combined materials do not age together. The National Archives describes handling artifacts made of several materials at once, noting that such objects are handled one at a time with nitrile gloves and that different components need different care.
A print with size, ink, a collage element and an adhesive is a small version of the same problem. Test the combination on scrap and keep the scrap, because the failure shows up in a year rather than in an afternoon.
Turning the projects into practice
Repeat one project each time you change a material. A new paper triggers the drying chart. A new ink triggers the base ladder. Our supply cost overview explains why a small amount of testing prevents the largest single waste in a studio, which is a full order of something that does not suit the work.
