Destination Dry Point

In this assignment, we were first asked to find a scenic photo we had taken as a reference to scratch the surface a piece of plexiglass with sandpaper to make 2 prints. We use sandpaper because it help hold ink, I used sandpaper to create my sky in my picture.We did this by first uploading our picture onto the Adobe photoshop to create a successful line art design from the photo, then we printed it out and used it as a template when tracing it over the plexiglass. When editing our photo in photoshop, we had to first crop it 4.5x6 inches. Then we had to smart sharpen it to make sure the amount was 500% at a radius of 1.5. Then to make the pictures details come alive we converted it into black and white via threshold and flattening the image. We were allowed to place around with how much we wanted to flatten the image as different pictures had to be flattened more to get its details become more sharp and easier to scratch out. This also meant we had to make sure was that our picture was not overly complicated, but complicated enough where intricate details that could be scratched out. I choose a picture I toke at this Dubai Mosk, I choose it because the lines on the building where beautifully carved as easy to scratch out as they were not too detailed but detailed enough to show texture and design. Here is a picture below of my original destination photo paired with the inked version of it.

Then once we had finished scratching out the details of the photo, we used sandpaper to create tonnes by scratching the edges of the plexiglass. I was very successful in scratching out my design onto the plexiglass as we were able to place our image below the transparent plexiglass, and using the scratching tool trace the details out. This made it very simple to remake the photo. Next, we moved on to actually inking the plexiglass, this in my opinion was fairly simple, here are the steps.

1) Place print press in water, then pick the ink you would like your drypoint postcard to be and smother the paint using the brayer on the plexiglass.

2)Use the dirty cloth to wipe the paint. Make sure you use enough paint so the scratches can be filled with paint, but not too much to a point where the paint won't come off and just smudges the plexiglass. This was a challenge I faced as I either put too little paint and when the time came to print, some scratches would not be printed as it was not filled with enough ink. Or I put too much paint so when I printed all the paint smudged and created blobs rather than specific and detailed lines.

3) Then lastly, use another clean cloth and wipe out all your excess paint. Then take out your print press and dab it with newspaper till dry. once the paper is dry place your plexiglass on the paper  and place it onto the printing machine facing downwards (so the plexiglass side with ink is on the paper).

4) Once that is done take out the paper and you will have your first drypoint postcard, repeat this process with another ink color to get a variety of designs.

If you do not understand the steps and would like to see it visually rather than verbally, I suggest you watch this excellent 4-minute video going through how to make a drypoint print step by step.

Overall, I really enjoyed this project and found it was very fun experimenting with different ways to use the ink when printing and test my creativity when using water color.