Print

I have been struggling with how to proceed with my book. I have been worrying if I will have time to print each page of my book individually. I have applied textures to digital illustrations before in Adobe Illustrator and wanted to try something new but workload and limited time scales have put me off certain processes. I have been letting worrying hold me back from experimenting until today. during the crit a couple of the group mentioned they had been they had been making mono prints at home. I went to town and bought a roller, glass chopping board and some ink. The rest of the day I spent making textures for my book and really enjoyed it. I used household items to create a wide range of textures, the only thing that stopped me printing was running out of paper. I have added some textures to a couple of the pages of my book. In some cases I live traced the textures so I could have more control over the scale and shape of them. By doing this I lost some of the detail of the textures I made.

I feel like I was trying to do too much with this process and the textures detract from the composition. I changes tactic and used textures that were not live traced. I did use Photoshop to alter the levels and separate the image into black and white. I tried to apply the textures in ways that would appear more natural. I think this second image looks much better but I have still lost some of the tones of the original prints. I want to try and make lino prints of individual sections of my compositions like a hill or the leaves of a tree and then arrange them digitally afterwards. I think this process could add a new dimension to my work. I will keep experimenting!

I shouldn't have got hung up on how my finished book would look, I should have just continued to experiment and try new processes. That what I am going to do next. I want to find ways to combine traditional and digital media that effectively marries the two. I will need to make sure I don't overcomplicate my work during these processes.