Thursday, October 10, 2013

Solar Plate Demonstration


Alex presented a solar plate demonstration for my beginning class on Tuesday evening. Rather than working with a traditional transparency, he created a mylar pocket that was filled with string, hair, clear contact paper with graphite offset, and other odds and ends. He placed the mylar pocket on the exposure unit glasstop and then taped the plate on top of that. The plate was then exposed three times, and in between each exposure, he carefully lifted the plate and added more string into the pocket. 



After applying ink to the exposed and 'etched' plate surface with a brayer, Alex pushed and pulled the ink around using a squeegee.   


Working the ink in multiple directions insures that ink will be deposited into the recessed areas. 




The plate is wiped with tarlatan and then followed with phonebook pages to polish the plate surface.


The plate before printing.


Alex and his print.


The impression shows all of the subtleties of the accumulated materials that were added to Alex's transparency pocket. His experiment resulted in a beautiful print. He'll continue investigating some quiet surface rolls on subsequent impressions. 

1 comment:

wcudmore said...

Love the Demo Alex. The process is one I will have to try! It is endless the objects you can use to make a great print.