Printmaking usually involves a very large, heavy press used to ‘pull’ off the prints. It was a delight to discover I could do this at home with my manual pasta maker. The pressure is easy to change using different felt or by changing the thickness of the rollers. The downfall is that the size of the prints are limited to about 4×6.
The printmaking technique I’ve been playing with is dry point etching on a flexible transparant plastic. Dry point is basically drawing using a sharp tool so that the image is scratched onto the plate. Because the plate is transparant a drawing or photograph can be easily traced.
The small size made me think of gift cards and Valentines day is coming up. I am teaching this technique next Wednesday, February third at Poppet Studio in Victoria from 10-12:30. Come and learn basic printmaking skills and take home some homemade cards!
