I have been making digital prints for quite a while now, although I didn't call them that at first. To be honest I don't think I called them anything but 'pictures'. I saw them as extensions of photography, since that was how they began, although they showed very little sign of that by the time I had finished making them.
Making this digital work seemed to awaken a wider creative urge however, and a chance opportunity to look around a printmaking studio led me to enrol on a Printmaking workshop at my local college. This isn't a course, but an opportunity to use much better presses than I could afford, to talk to other printmakers and to have access to advice and support from a tutor. I'm in my second year now, although last term was pretty much a waste of time because of illness, hospital etc (I still haven't written that post!).
I have up to now concentrated on collagraph and monoprinting although I have had a go at linocut and engraving too. I still prefer the look and feel of collagraph. At first I wasted a lot of time trying to get consistent inking in order to create an edition. That was largely a waste of time with a plate that in the nature of things is changing as you use it.
The picture below, available on Etsy, was reasonably successful however, although even this simple image exists in two separate forms, with one of those further modified by application of chine colle.
One of the other forms is also on Etsy.
I also began making monotypes at home, using acrylic paints and a hand roller on half sheets of watercolour paper. Within these abstract images I find tiny imaginary landscapes and scenes that I select to make small prints for mounting. Occasionally I can take a second impression, which is usually softer in character.
This one was created that way, although in this case from an unsuccessful larger monotype made in the studio with oil based inks. The selection suggests to me a flock of birds over a hedgerow.
I'm really enjoying this approach to printing. It is satisfyingly tactile and sufficiently unpredictable to be interesting.
Also, as I develop my skills in making the handpulled prints, ideas are beginning to spill over into my digital work.
This image for example started life as two separate acrylic monotypes, neither of which worked properly. The first impression was too dark, so I tried a second. This was too light! I combined the two in a sort of digital art version of HDR. It is not of itself a reproduction, since it is not a direct copy but it still began life as a physical image, not in the PC.
