Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mrs. Carter and I'm gonna be guiding you through our lesson today, where we're going to be looking at how we can create a print from a printing plate.

For this one, we're going to be looking at how we can use recycled materials to create the plate, and ideally you want to be thinking about some food packaging.

Make sure that you've checked the equipment list before we start today's lesson so that you are able to engage with all of the tasks.

We've got lots to do in today's lesson.

And we're going to be moving at quite a pace.

I'm sure you're going to do fantastically and have a great go at each task and question, so you can get the most out of our learning today.

Let's get started being fabulous learners.

By the end of today's lesson, you're going to be able to say, I can create a press print using a food packaging plate and develop the design to create more complex print.

We've got lots to get through today, so let's get started.

In order to engage with the lesson today, really effectively, there are some keywords I want you to be very confident using.

So the first is plate.

The plate in printmaking is the surface from which a print can be taken.

This can be carved into or built up.

Drypoint, drypoint is a printing process, where a sharp object is used to draw into the plate.

And mirror image.

A mirror image is an image or an object which is identical in form to the other, but with the structure reversed.

So think about when you look in a mirror, the fact that your left side will appear to be your right side because it has been flipped.

It's really important to remember this when we're thinking about lettering as well because that will also be flipped and then not actually be readable.

Our lesson today comes in two cycles.

Initially, we're going to be creating a drypoint plate.

Then we're gonna move on to printing successfully.

Let's get started creating a drypoint plate.

Andeep and Laura have been researching printing.

Andeep says, "There's lots of specific words in printmaking," and Laura adds, "Yes surely plate in printmaking is not the same as it is at home." Have you noticed any specific language in printmaking? A plate in printmaking is the surface from which a print can be taken.

Some plates are carved or cut into like a liner, a poly tile or drypoint etching.

Others are built up like polygraphs.

This example here is a lino plate.

Can you see all those grooves and lines? They've been removed with a lino tool, which allows the artist to create a different surface and that's where the print would be taken from.

Okay, check for understanding time.

A plate imprint making is the surface the artist uses to hold the inks and rollers.

Pause the video and decide if you think that statement is true or false.

Well done if you said that that was false.

The plate in printmaking is the surface from which a print can be taken.

Some plates work by removing the areas where ink is not wanted, like this lino print.

You can see the areas that have been carved away and you can see those lines where the evidence of what's been removed is still there.

And then when you look on the right, you can see that same area.

Remembering it's a mirror image has no black ink.

There's nothing left there.

It's just that kind of turquoisey blue background.

You might notice there are a few of those stripes and lines and that's where the ink has managed to just get onto the surface of the grooves that have been cut away.

Drypoint plates work by capturing ink in the cut incisions and require polishing to remove the ink.

So on the left there you can see the printing plate and you can see it's got a lot of ink captured on the surface and you can see where the incisions, the darker areas on the plate there, on the actual print have remained darker areas.

The areas you want to be pale.

You can see here the polished areas are then pale on your print.

What's the difference between the plate and the print do you think? Jun says the image has been flipped when printing.

It's a mirror image and Sofia adds yes.

That means any text would need to be carved backwards to work.

It's a really important thing to remember when you're thinking about printing.

You will always get a mirror image with drypoint plates and it's important that you think about that when you're creating or design.

Okay, check for understanding time.

True or false? All types of printing plate are used in the same way.

Pause the video and decide if you think that's true or false.

Great work if you said false.

A printmaking plate will be used differently depending on the type of print being made.

Linos and poly tiles are a reduction print where drypoint requires polishing to remove the ink.

Artists experiment and develop with their printmaking to employ different methods of printing.

So Karen Wicks uses food packaging as the material for her drypoint plates as its inexpensive and an accessible material.

Mandi Stewart develops abstract prints from her collaged plates, which are known as collagraphs.

Ade Adesina creates a wide range of printmaking works, sometimes working collaboratively with other artists to create his work.

Bruce Onobrakpeya pioneered, refined and mastered various techniques in printmaking.

And Krishna Reddy developed his colour veracity process to achieve multiple colours on a plate.

I'm sure you can see from that there's lot of ways that you can be experimental and innovative with printmaking.

Printmaking can be used in a wide range of industries, such as book illustration, luxury packaging, textile design, stamp and currency design, historical reproduction and custom stationary and invitations.

Printmaking can involve the use of specialist machines such as a printing press, however, printmaking does not always require the use of specialist equipment to be successful.

Printing plates can be made from everyday materials.

Have you ever used an everyday material to create your plate when you're printing? We can use food packaging to create a printing plate.

So cardboard containers for liquid foods have a metal lining and if you were to open it up, it looks like this image I've put here on the left.

The lining lends itself to polishing and the cardboard can trap the ink so it makes a perfect plate.

Can you think of any other materials that we could recycle into a printing plate? For your first practical task, you're going to create a landscape inspired drypoint plate to print from.

You should use a needle or compass to make your incisions.

Press softly with the needle of the compass.

You do not want to cut through the plate, otherwise it might fall apart.

What you need to do is just indent that surface just a little bit.

Plan for the plate, which will print as a mirror image.

So remember if you are planning to include any signs, maybe there's a road sign, maybe there is a recognisable building or feature, and if you need it to print the way round you see it in the image, you need to flip it on your plate so that it is a mirror image as you are working on it on your plate.

Think about using the shape of your packaging in your design.

Because it's cardboard, it's very easy for you to cut it out.

So if you want a really smooth area that's not gonna have any possibility of getting ink on it, then you could cut that completely out.

You can use images that are provided in the additional materials or you can select your own from your local area.

Think about an area that's important to you.

Pause the video and get started on your plate now.

How did you get on? Did you find it quite tricky? It takes a little while to work out how much pressure you can apply to create your design.

You might have something that looks a little bit like this that Lucas has produced, and he says, "I've been able to incorporate the food packaging into my composition and create lots of marks and lines into the metal lining.

I didn't need to press hard into the packaging to create the in incised lines." And I think he's talking about those creases.

You can see where the packaging has been opened and we've got that crease running through, and I think he might have used the rule of thirds there, which is very clever to make us have a focal point in the work.

So we're moving onto printing successfully.

Alex is thinking about how to print his plate, and he asks, "How do we turn this plate into a print? If I use a roller like with relief printing, the ink would sit on the surface but not get into the carved areas." Can you think of any other steps that would be different than with other types of printing? Inking the plate for drypoint printing is a key process to gain a successful print.

Initially you need to use plastic to push the ink into the incisions that you've cut.

Then you remove the ink by polishing the surface with an old cloth or a tissue.

You'll likely find that working in small circular motions is going to work really effectively and you might need to keep turning your fabric or tissue, so that you're using a cleaner surface as you are buffing off that excess ink.

Part of this process is also about helping to encourage any ink into those incisions, so working really methodically can be helpful.

Be careful not to rub all of your ink away though, otherwise you'll have nothing in the indents that will print.

And then finally, you can use something smaller like a cotton bud to remove small areas of ink and be more precise.

You might have been thinking about when we've done reduction printing in monoprinting and you can even create marks at this point if you wanted to.

Okay, so check for understanding.

Which is the most accurate process for inking a drypoint plate? Is it A, roll the roller in ink, roll the ink onto the plate and polish the surface? Or is it B, use plastic to push the ink into the plate and then polish the surface? Is it C, use a cloth to put the ink onto the roller and then roll ink onto the plate? Pause the video and decide which you think is the correct answer.

Great work if you said B, you're gonna use the plastic to push the ink onto the plate and then polish the surface so that you've only got that ink remaining in the indents of your plate.

Printing the inked drypoint plate requires pressure to transfer the ink from the plate to the paper.

So you want to put your plate onto the printing press.

You are then gonna place your paper over the plate.

Now your paper ought to be a little bit damp.

That will allow the ink to transfer more effectively across.

You're going to put the press blanket over the top and then you roll all of that through the printing press.

Make sure that you're not using a printing press by yourself and you've got a responsible adult with you to make sure that you're doing it safely.

Okay, check for understanding.

Which step is missing in this process? The plate has been put onto the press.

The paper has been put over the plate and the press blanket has been put over the top.

So what's that final step? Pause the video and decide what you think the correct answer is.

Great work if you remembered that, the next step is to roll the plate and the paper and the blanket through the printing press.

A printing press exerts pressure pushing the ink onto the paper to create your print.

We can develop prints by printing onto other surfaces.

We can also alter prints to create more complex designs through rotating the plate, repeating the plate, combining different plates together and working into the print.

So when you finish and you've created your print may not be the end of the work.

You can really push it further and experiment with lots of opportunities.

Okay, so we're getting onto your second practical task.

What I'd like you to do for task B1 is to ink your plate.

You should use your plastic to push ink into the incisions.

Polish away the ink from the surface using old cloth scraps or tissues.

Use cotton buds for small areas.

Dispose of any dirty tissues or cotton buds or cloth.

Take your time; the better the plate is inked, the more successful the print.

So remember that process is to ink your plate using the plastic to push the ink into your incisions, to then polish away from the surface of the plate using tissues or old cloth, and then using cotton buds to remove any smaller areas.

Pause the video and get started inking your plate now.

How did you get on? Have you managed to ink your plate? Great work, I would suggest now is a good time to make sure that your space and your hands are nice and clean before you get started on printing your plate, which is our next step.

For printing your plate, you should dampen your paper so it's more sensitive to the ink.

This will allow it to pick up more ink, but be careful not to drench it.

If it's too wet, the ink won't sit on the paper and you'll lose all that detail you've been able to create.

Sandwich the plate and the paper between scraps of paper.

Then press the plate and the paper in a printing press.

So plate onto the press, paper onto the plate, press blanket over the top and then roll it through the printing press.

Pause the video and get started printing your work now.

How did you get on? Did you find you had to do it a few times to get the print that you wanted? You may have found sometimes that you cleaned off far too much ink or it might have taken a couple of times of inking your plate to get enough into the incisions to get a really bold, successful print.

You might have produced something that looks a little bit like this, and Lucas shares, "It took me quite a long time to ink my plate.

I feel I've been able to create great prints.

There are some places I think I over polished and removed too much ink, and I need to remember that next time." Can you see the variety in the prints that he's produced? We've got some that are really dark and some that are paler.

Depending on what you are aiming to achieve, depends on which of those are the type of print that you want to be able to produce.

So now for task B 3, I'd like you to develop your print, so you could rotate your plate so you're printing it more than once in the same piece of paper, but rotating the design.

You could repeat the image, so maybe you're not rotating it but you're repeating it on the same page.

You could combine different plates together and you could print onto different surfaces like fabric, like the example here.

And you could also work into the print.

Depending on the type of ink you've used might change what kind of materials you can use to work into your print.

So remember, if you're using a water based ink that anything you put on it that is water based will move that ink around.

There are lots of other options including sewing.

Pause the video and get started developing your prints now.

How did you get on? I wonder what you chose to develop your print.

You might have done something like this.

And Jun says, "Wow, Lucas, I love the detail and complexity in your developed print.

It's a really interesting way of printing." It's true, isn't it that you can see a lot of detail because it's been printed onto the fabric and the fact that we've got the texture of the fabric and the texture of the print makes it more complex and interesting to look at.

And here Lucas has further developed it and he started to look at stitching into it.

And Izzy shares, "This is such an exciting way to develop your print further Lucas.

I really like the stitch you have begun." I wonder if you've developed yours in more than one way.

So in summary of our lesson, designing printing plates and transferring the design.

A plate in printmaking is the surface from which a print can be taken.

So for our lesson today, that would be the cardboard packaging with the metal lining.

Some plates work by removing the areas where ink is not wanted, but drypoint plates work by capturing the ink in cut grooves and require polishing.

Printing the ink to drypoint plate requires pressure to transfer the ink from the plate to the paper.

And today we've created that pressure using a printing press.

But you may have just used your hand or a roller when you've made other types of printing in the past.

Artists can develop prints using different surfaces, working into prints or rotating to create more complex designs.

Really well done for all of your work today.

We've gone through lots of different stages and actually drypoint printing is quite a long process, although it does produce some fantastic work.

I'm sure you're really pleased with your outcomes and you should be really proud of everything you've been able to achieve today.

I really look forward to seeing you in our next lesson.