Studio Brief 2: Printed Pictures
More Roughs, More Lino

More Roughs

Having quite enjoyed the process of printing with lino I decided to try doing a few more rather than immediately go with screen printing as my chosen process.

Given that up until now, all my refined roughs had been portrait or landscape I decided that, as a set it could work quite nicely to have a square print thrown in to the mix. Therefore when I was drawing out some potential lino designs I worked mainly within the square format.

 I also started creating images that I felt would better translate into lino which in inadvertently resulted in creating graphic vignettes style (there is a clear border but they don't really exist within a scene) images as opposed to more compositionally complex scenic illustrations I had created previously. As I cohesive set I think the two types of outcome don't work as well together as just doing one or the other therefore when deciding upon my final designs I will need to focus on one approach or the other.

Chosen Designs for further Lino Tests

Visually and conceptually I felt the extreme close up of the woman's face as well as the swimmer viewed from the side were the strongest and therefore decided to create them both as small, 2 colour linos. Much like my work for studio brief 1 I felt the first image had a strong visceral impact in sighting a feeling of melancholy and loss whilst retaining an air of ambiguity.

I felt the second image had a similar impact in terms of its ambiguity however I think given the angle of the swimming coupled with the amount of his face that is hidden the image looks a lot more bizarre, and therefore ties in with my aims for studio brief 2 where as although the first image conceptually works with my over all themes/concepts for this module it is perhaps better suited to the first brief than the current one.

Although I like how blue and red work together I think, much like the Shark Lino, they create the wrong atmosphere in that using red for the water immediately gives the impression of blood resulting in a sinister and violent feeling image, something that I really don't want from my set.
In contradict to this I think the colours on the second lino work a lot better when my aims for this studio brief are considered. The use of two dull results in a low key colour pallet further reinforcing the melancholy feel of the image.

Cleaning Up Prints Digitally

After I had printed the linos I wasn't completely happy with how they look given the amount of noise (in terms of unwanted cutting marks showing through) present on the prints and in the second rpitn felt that I had could the woman's left eye to thin resulting an off balance lightly creepy looking image. Therefore I used Photoshop to clean up the images as well as boost up the levels to create more vivid and desirable final colours. I realised after this just how important post production of prints can be in terms of clean them up either by hand or digitally given the amount of imperfections which can occur.