Block printing at the hacklab

Alex is here to lead us in a print workshop. My previous printing experiment failed with intaglio style printing. I meant to try imitation letterpress but didn’t get around to it. Alex is showing us block printing and she knows what she’s doing. Here I try to liveblog what she’s doing. It’s not going to be complete so you’ll want to watch the video too, and probably search for block printing on instructables.

You can see her laying down markings in pencil. The marks are slightly bigger than the blocks we’ll be using. After she marks them, she uses a syringe to lay out drops of water along the lines. You can see in the photo that the water is beading. She fixes that by scoring over the lines so the water can absorb. After that, she can tear.

Once the paper is torn up she tosses them into a flat tupperware container that’s filled with water. Note that this paper actually has cotton in it, it’s not entirely wood pulp like printer paper. You soak it to get the sizing out, which is a starchy glue thing that keeps it stiff. Warm water works best for this. With that out you can use less force in order to press the paper and leave the indent, also known as the “kiss” of the block. The water also resists the oil so you get a cleaner print.

Now, she mixes the paint. Some tips: You don’t need printer’s ink, and you don’t need to use paint thinner or mineral spirits to clean up. In fact paint thinner or mineral spirits in the kitchen is a bad idea unless you want to be poisoned to death. We’re using oil based paint with an extender. It’s cheap. To clean up we’re using tough-on-grease palmolive. It’s also cheap. Also note that we’re using a dye based paint, not powder in an oil suspension. You can’t mix the two.  After that we’re using corn oil as a cheap alternative to printer’s medium. You might notice that cheap is a theme here. Mix and scrape and tweak to get the desired viscosity. Once that’s done it’s time to ink.

The next segments I’ve conveniently got available in video form! Apologies for the shakycam and poor framing. They were taken on impulse using my point and shoot camera. If we do another workshop we’ll bring a real video camera.

It’s best to use a roller than can go over the entire block at once and take as much time as you need for this part. Alex takes her time here, explaining that a lucite roller works, or you can use a rubber one. She explains that attention to detail is probably the most important part. You will get some ink splatter away from the raised edges. Leave that for a photocopier-like effect. She thinks that’s cool, like an underground zine. Sponge it off if you want it to look perfect. Not for Alex, though. If she wants perfect she uses a laser printer. It looks like this is where you get creative and can decide things like if you want to ink the edges of the block so that you get a border when you’re pressing down with the barren.

Finally, we’re ready to do the actual pressing. Alex takes some paper out of the soak tank and blots it from both sides with a towel. She leaves it damp. She lays the paper on the inked block, then takes her time and presses it with the barren several times with even of a pressure. Watch the end of the first video for a better explanation of what to do.

Alex demonstrates this in the first video using a laser etched wood block. The second part we do the same thing but using a laser etched acrylic block. The last video explains cleanup.

Cleanup without the solvents involves a lot of scraping. Alex would first scrape off most of the ink onto tin foil if she wants to use it later, but this time she uses newsprint since it’s going to be thrown out. Eventually she just can’t scrape off any more and she’s left with a fine film. She pours on some corn oil. This dilutes the oil paint and lets her spread it around again. She can polishes it off using crumpled newsprint. After that, she uses grease busting dish soap to clean the remnants off.

All of this is very cheap to do. The tube of extender cost $45 and is the most expensive part. The barren was ten to fifteen dollars at any art store. The lucite roller was about twenty dollars. The tube we used here is still more than a third full and it’s been used for seven years. The oil pant you can find on sales for cheap. The spreaders come in three and six packs from hardware stores and cost only a couple bucks. Best of all, this all can be done in a kitchen, just like the video shows.

Whew. And that’s the end of the liveblog attempt. Take a look at Owen’s photo set on flickr and my gallery below. I have photos for the first few steps which Owen missed, and he’s got photos that I couldn’t take while I was recording video.