Another attempt at the transfer method

I had another go at the transfer method of mono printing again working from the same portrait as before. The initial portrait pen sketch and the three new mono prints I created are shown below.

With all three attempts below, I used a single inking up of the plate, covered that with a sheet of newspaper first and rolled over that and pealed off to remove excess ink. I then proceeded to produce each of the following prints in succession using the transfer method without inking up up again between prints. This helped to produce much clearer images.

The first again is more abstract as I drew blindly with a brush handle onto the blank paper overlaying the plate.But I quite like it – the duplication of the top of the head and the double set of eyes glaring out of the page. The mouth looks quite realistic too, though of course there is no nose. But it does look like someone concentrating, which of course I was when I created the initial sketch.

The next two attempts were more accurately drawn – I scratched more deeply into the back of the paper with an opened out paper clip, so I could see traces of where I had drawn – this was done more in the third and final attempt. There is still some distortion of features, which helps to make the images more interesting, but the increased accuracy means the nice looseness of the first image is lost – also, particularly with the third image there is a sort of coarse naive feel about the drawing, I think because of the scratched lines which force your hand a bit.

I like all of the images here but you get a different effect by trying to be more accurate.

I also realised with the first two that I wasn’t doing anything with the negative space (see course unit 4), so in the third attempt I rubbed over the negative spaces with a polished stone. I don’t quite know how I feel about the result, but perhaps it helps to make the picture feel more complete – something I think I would need to experiment with more. Perhaps I could rub over the negative spaces with a sponge, and/or perhaps work inwards from the negative space and make that the main worked area of the picture.