Chair Project - Lino Experiment

Because I wanted to explore another specialism along with 3D in this project, I chose to spend a day at college experimenting with Lino Prints. I chose to experiment with Lino Prints as I liked how the prints looked, and wanted to experiment with this myself. To start off with, I cut a Lino of a face, to understand how to show light and shade in a Lino Print and to gain a better understanding of how to make one as I have never previously done so. I printed with this test Lino too, to get the process of printing right, to have a rough idea of how much ink should be used, and how to actually print with it using the press in the first place.

When I first printed using this Lino, I realised that I hadn't carved out some places well enough and they were showing up on the final print. To overcome this, I re-worked into the Lino and when I felt better about it I printed again. As shown in the photo above, the change is a really big one and I am glad I worked back into my work. After doing these prints and feeling like I had finally got the hang of the whole process, I decided that it was now time to do some of chair designs. I created 6 chair designs in total, some of them were chair designs that the designers I have previously looked at have made, and others were chair designs that I found and really liked the look of. I left some of the Lino in the background, making it look as if the designs weren't 'clean cut' like mass produced chairs are, I wanted them to look less perfect, a little bit home-made and not to a high standard of commercial printers do. 

When it came to printing with my designs, I didn't want to mix up my own colour, I wanted to use one straight out of the tube so that the colour wouldn't be changed even in the slightest, just like chair designs don't alter whilst being mass produced. I wanted to show a contrast in each lino, from indulging the idea of mass production and fighting against it. Because I liked this effect so much, I decided to go one step further with it, I did this by deciding to print each design in 4 colours, and each colour 4 times, as if they have been produced in the thousands. This took up a lot of time, as after each individual print I had to wash and dry my Lino, to ensure that the outcome wouldn't go 'blotchy' or have too much ink in one area and not enough in another. Despite this, I am happy that I did this as it really gave me a feel of what it would be like working in a factory that mass produces items, it never alters. 

I really liked how my prints turned out, I am immensely proud of them as I have never done a Lino print before, and I really got the hang of doing it and my prints turned out great! I would definitely like to experiment some more with printmaking and I definitely will if I have the time to do so in this project.