Printmaking Class at the Boston MFA: Class #2

We did more monoprinting in my printmaking class at the Boston MFA.  This week the instructor asked us to bring objects to print with.  Students brought lots of items from nature, stickers, paper flowers, lace, etc.  Take a peek at what some of my classmates created (where you see two similar prints, one is a "ghost" or a second pass through the printing press):

As for me, you won't be surprised to know that I brought stencils to play with!  At the beginning of class, I assumed that putting stencils through the press would be almost identical to the effect of Gelli Printing with stencils.  

It wasn't.

The printing press is a different beast.  It prints the stencils perfectly (including the engraved item number) and leaves a small white border around the edge, which really makes the stencil pop off the page.  Take a peek:

The instructor liked this stencil so much she hung up the newsprint that had the overprinting on it:

After creating my first print, I flipped the stencil over (assuming that yellow and red ink was now all over the back of the stencil) and tried printing it again.

Fainter than I would have liked, but still interesting.  Check out what the plate looked like when I pulled the stencil off:

If there hadn't been such a long line to use the press I might have tried printing that ghost.

Instead, I took the original yellow and red plate (which now had the impression of the stencil in it) and added two new stencils and some random marks.  Here's the plate on my workspace and then up close:

And here's the print:

It almost looks like you could pull that fish stencil right off the print.  It's such a perfect impression and the white border adds a kind of drop shadow. 

I stuck with my very basic primary palette for the rest of my prints:

I used the ghost of the print above in combination with my lace stencil to create my final (and favorite) print of the night:

It was really interesting to try to convert what I know about monoprinting from the Gelli Plate over to working with a press.  There are lots of differences and I enjoyed the intellectual puzzle as I was working.  In fact, the only problem with this class is that I now want a printing press of my own...!

Thanks for stopping by!