Thanks to the lovely people at East London Printmakers, I’ve finally got my head around photopolymer etching. This has totally opened up a new method of allowing me to transfer from drawing to print getting a little more contrast into my work (which I battled with in the Cebeci Hani illustrations) while keeping hold of some of the gestural mark making of pencil line that I have always loved.

As part of the test printing process I found that applying a preset curve in photoshop was hugely effective in producing a good range of tone in the final print (though I’m still not sure I understand how Helen came to actually creating the curve- that will remain the ‘magic’ bit for now!).

Here are a few photos from the studio…

To first determine the right level of contrast for the plate, I ran through a test print. A preset curve is applied to the bottom section of the original image which gave a far greater range of tones in print

Final edited image printed from photoshop to transparency and laid out in exposure machine ready for exposing. (Unfortunately I didn’t notice that the printer had left tiny imprinted lines on the transparency that picked up in the plate and caused some major headaches later on!)

Final plate

Inked up with whiting used to remove plate tone and lines left from impressions