Printing Processes

What are the Printing Processes?

The three main printing processes are Relief, Intaglio and Lithography. These processes all include a transfer of ink from a certain surface to paper. All of them have a different process which I will explain in detail. 

Relief

use a block of wood or a piece of linoleum

Use tools similar to a woodcutter would if working on wood 

Tone the block with Indian ink wash or wash of a jet black film. This works on linoleum but isn't necessary

Use Iron Oxide or Carbon paper transfer that has your design already on prepared

Transfer the image

Decide on if you want to use White line, which reveals the image through thin white lines, or Black Line, which is removing majority of the wood to reveal the image. A balance of boh is usually used.

Roll ink onto the block

Place in Press

If done by hand, use a baren, which is a tool used to transfer the ink from the block to paper, ad apply gentle pressure all over the paper on the block.  

 carefully pull the paper off of the block and check to make sure the image transferred.

Intaglio

prepare plate  by cleaning it

apply a ground to the plate which acts as a nonacid 

smoke the plate by placing it upside down

scratch away the ground to reveal the metal

etch the plate for fifteen minutes

submerge plate in a bath/pan of acid

clean the plate again

wipe the plate with ink 

hand-wipe the edges 

put chalk on your hands and brush over the surface

set on press

use a dampened sheet of paper

print.

Lithography

use a lithographic stone like limestone to draw on

use Lithographic materials/pencils/crayon to draw on stone

remove grease with sandpaper or razorblades if needed

Once drawing is finished, use gum arabic and rub all over stone

Use rosin and Talc to establish drawing

Apply acidified gum arabic  or TAPEM

apply more gum arabic

use cheesecloth to buff in 

use lithotine 

use aphaltem

apply water to clean

rub ink with an ink roller over the image

apply dampend paper

press. 

repeat adding ink to stone and press four to six times. 

Which one would I do?

I'd do lithography because I don't know much about wood or metal and I think stone would be a similar surface to paper since I draw a lot. I think these processes have some influence in contemporary design. 

ONW Procedures

     Over the past couple of weeks, I worked with a team to film a "how to" video related to our school. For example, how to use the lunch line, how to get into the school if you're late, dress code etc. My group decided to do "how to use the elevator". At my school, if yo are injured, and can't walk up the stairs, you can get a key from the nurse that grants you access to the elevator. We talked to the nurse to see if she was okay with lending us a key and if we could film. She said it was okay, and so we began. All my team members had the same basic idea for what we should film and do for our video. I had a pair of crutches and an ankle brace that fit me at home that I brought to school to use as props. I played the injured person in the video, and another person on my team played the person helping me. For editing, we all used Adobe Premiere Pro which is fantastic for editing and putting together videos. In the end, I think I did a good job with my video. Our camera was having technical difficulties at first, but we got a new one, and all is good. I would fix the white balance in some shots and well as leveling the shots by using the tripod. I would also reshoot the scene coming out of the elevator because one of our members decided it'd be funny if he was in the shot, but we were running out of time to film due to camera issues, so we just used what we had. All in all, this project was fun and I would do it again in the future if given the chance.

Multi-Exposure Panorama

   

     Going to Paris, France was one of the best trips I've ever had. The culture, language, food, architecture, people, and geography are all things I love. The photos I used in this collage were from the second level of the Eiffel Tower. 

     It was on a Sunday. Toby and my grandpa decided to visit Sainte-Chapelle, which is the most beautiful cathedral in my opinion. Then, we walked around a bit to visit the Luxemburg Garden, which is bigger than huge, and got some gelato at the best gelato place in Paris, Amorino. 

     We then decided to visit the Eiffel tower, and my grandpa and I got in line to climb up the stairs to the second level. We had to take two little breaks to catch our breath due to the amount of stairs there were.  When we reached the first level, we looked out at the view, but there was a fence blocking some of the scenery. 

     My grandpa and I continued up the stairs and finally reached the second level. There were hundreds of tourists looking out at the beautiful view of Paris. I was fortunate enough to capture some photos. The view was amazing! It reminded me of that scene of Ratatouille where Remy sees the beautiful view of Paris. 

      A few months later, school starts and I'm in Graphic Design. I've finished many projects and side projects and our ext project has to be a collage of photos we've taken. I decided to use the photos from the Eiffel tower because of the beautiful view. I did edit the original photos to give it more of an "old-timey" feel. I started putting it together by lining up the photos with the Seine river and go from there. I used the eraser tool probably one hundred times as well as many layer masks. Overall, I think I did Paris justice in capturing it's beauty and essence.  

Pop Art Design

The Process

     I started by selecting photos of my partner and chose the one I thought I could work with easily. I decided to use the primary colors for the subject and secondary colors for the background. I did put in some yellow arrows to add some normal shapes and to create more of a "pop art" feel. I was mostly inspired by Roy Lichtenstein, who used a lot of primary colors. I used a lot of color balance to change the colors of the subject aw well as some gradients for the background and for the glasses. I had a little trouble with the gradient tool due to my lack of experience with it, but i eventually figured it out.  I did have some trouble with the hair and glasses because the hair had little details that I couldn't include and with the glasses because i used a gradient on the glass part of them. Overall, I enjoyed this project, not my favorite, but one I enjoyed. 

The Project 

"Nature Man"

      This assignment was to Photoshop a man using either the provided photos or our own and edit him using the photos. The goal was to keep his face visible

The Process

Here is Alien Man. My edit of the challenge

     At the beginning, I was going to do a horror themed edit, but I didn't find any images I liked or thought would be interesting, so I ditched the idea, and decided to make it Outer Space-galaxy-star themed. I found a lot of different images of stars and planets as well as some alien themed photos as well and compiled all of them together and created Alien Man, at least that's what I titled it once I saved it. I didn't use the photos provided because they photos of mountains, trees, tree roots, hence the name of this blog, "Nature Man".  

      I used a lot of layer masks to edit all of this together. It wasn't difficult, but it was a lot of "rinse and repeat". Every photo I added had to be resized, erase the unwanted bits, make sure it looks "natural" etc. I I really enjoyed this project, and I highly recommend doing this challenge to anyone with basic photoshop skills. I used a lot of the skill from the previous lessons and incorporated them into this project. There were some days where all I wanted to do was work on this project. 

Finished Project

     I'm really happy with the way it came out. It is interesting and weird, but I think it works. I have shown some of my friends and they all seemed to like it. I did finish early because I came in during lunch to work on it because of how much fun I had working on it. Since I finished early, I had extra time to make another edit on a different photo. Same rules applied but it was whoever we found on Google. 

The Extra Edit

     This extra edit was especially fun because it is of a video game character from a game I like. The game is called Undertale and the character I chose is Undyne. I think . I did a pretty good job. I didn't do as much detail as my last edit. For example, I didn't edit the clothes, hair or background and instead, focused more on the facial features. Again, this edit was for fun, but I still think I did a decent job. I did forget to edit some things like the earrings, and forgot to add some eyeshadow and gills to the character, but I think it's still recognizable. 

Photoshop

What was the project?

The whole purpose of this project was to learn about photoshop, its tools and how to photoshop different items and people. 

                       Lesson One

     The first lesson was on content aware fill, which is deleting unwanted items out of a photo or backgr
ound. I had four different photos that I had to photoshop and it was simple and easy to do. I really enjoyed learning this simple trick and it will help me in the future. Originally, this photo to the left had many unnecessary items and blemishes, but thanks to Photoshop, I easily got rid of those unwanted blemishes and objects and made it what it is now.

Lesson Two

     Patch Tool is a variation of lesson one. I learned that Content Aware Fill won't always work fr getting rid of unwanted objects or items. The Patch Tool is a good substitute to get rid of bigger items such as t-shirt logos. I had a harder time making the shirt look more natural, but for the lesson, I did a good job.

       Lesson Three

     While getting rid of unwanted items is all good and an essential lesson in Photoshop, knowing how to make the rest look natural without the unwanted item is also necessary. That's what Clone Stamp and Healing Brush help you do. I thought I did a pretty good job on this. The goal of this project was to get rid of a clothing tag on the jacket near the arm and pocket of the right side of the photo. Overall I did a pretty good job, however I did make one, very little minuscule mistake near the pocket, but from afar, it isn't noticeable.  I did enjoy learning this skill and will need it in the future.

Lesson Four

The objective of this Photoshop lesson was to get rid of unwanted background items. Tis lesson was called Clone Stamp and Patch Tool. We used the clone stamp from the previous lesson as well as the patch tool from lesson two and combined them to erase a pole in the background. We used the clone stamp to get rid of the section near the guy's head as well as the entire pole, then used the patch tool to make the sky more natural. I enjoyed this lesson more than the previous lessons. This and lesson one are my top favorites. 

Lesson Five

Lesson Five was using the spot healing brush to get rid of blemishes and make the skin smoother. The photo was already in black and white and originally, the boy was covered in dirt and just had some blemishes here and there. Thanks to the spot healing brush, it was easy to get rid of the dirt spots and blemishes. This lesson was okay, I did enjoy it, but not one I'd want to do every week. 

Lesson Six

Out of all the lessons so far, this lesson was the most complicated and least liked by me. The goal was to make a collage out of three photos of a girl modeling. As you can see, I messed up on one of her faces. I had to go back to different sections of the lesson and repeat many things because I would make a mistake and have to delete a layer. This was the hardest out of all of them and took me many days, almost a week, to complete. This lesson was complicated and harder than the previous lessons so it makes sense as to the amount of time I had to spend on it, but that doesn't mean I enjoyed it. All in all, it was a good way to combine every skill previously learned as well as some new ones, but not one I'd do again. 

 

Self-Portrait

     Description

     For my first official Video assignment of the 2018-2019 school year, I decided to show the hobbies and activities I like and do on a regular basis with a twist. I'm speaking French because I've been learning the language since fourth grade. I've always been interested in the language, culture and the country of France. This past summer, I did visit France and it's very different than America, but I enjoyed every minute I was there, whether it was at the Eiffel Tower or at a little cafe, watching the people pass by. I wanted to speak in French because it's a language I've spent a lot of time to learn and I wanted to practice my vocabulary by speaking it in the video. Through this video I want people to see how much I know and how I can communicate to others in a foreign language.
     Out of all the other self-portraits I've seen I really liked Jaiden's video where he wrote a poem touching on how movies portray homosexuality and racism and how homosexuality and racism is a deeper problem and real life than what everyone would like to believed. I thought it was really brave of him to do that and inspired me to a better friend and person.

Explain

     I wanted to film against a blank wall with nothing else to look at around me so all the attention goes to me and what I am doing. I also tried to find a bright room so the object and myself are visible and easy to see. As for the framing, I made it so the audience could see examples of what I like that relate to a bigger topic and made sure to keep that example up so the audience has enough time to process and make connections before moving on. There are a ton of examples in the video but one is when I'm talking about watching tv, and that I prefer Phineas and Ferb. All of these connect to what I wanted to show about myself because they are things, activities, and hobbies I like and what make up me. 

Reflect

     I hope through this video people can gain a better understanding of me, my life and what I like. I think I was successful since I got majority of the activities and hobbies I like in the video. I did have some trouble with some filming at one point because my camera roll was full, and wouldn't record. Most of the other troubles I had were forgetting what I was going to say, and not continually talking and the transistion to the other subject was not the greatest, but I think I did okay. One thing I would do differently is add more examples and maybe write some notes or reminders of what I'm going to say so that way there's no waiting. I learned that it's difficult to get everything want across to the audience and not everything you like will make it into the final cut.