This week has been great, I was able to spend most of the week in the studio working on a couple prints, one of Melanie’s designs and one of my prints. It is a lot of fun having all this time to make art, it makes me feel very fulfilled as an artist and increasingly I will be spending more time in the studio. The decision was made because Melanie and I have been designing so many prints and posters but we have not had enough time to print them all. On top of this we have projects coming up and need time to be able to focus on those. In the coming months I will be posting more about the prints we are working on, documenting all the art we are making and sharing it with our community.
This week I was printing Melanie’s Lila Downs piece which i have been working on for the past month and it is almost finished, pictures of that print to come.
I started working on a print of a Iranian protester, I had come across the a photo when the protests in Iran first started. The look in the woman’s eyes were super intense and the rocks in her hands make her look fierce. This is a 22″x30″ print and to produced it, I use a one arm press which allows me to print larger areas by using an attachment to run the squeegee across the screen. Using the one arm makes it easier to print large areas with out breaking my back.
I’m going to keep posting more pictures every week of stuff we’re printing, there should be some cool art coming!
This is out one arm press, this is great for printing large posters.
Printing the flesh tone.
Printing the pink of the woman’s scarf…a couple more colors and it’s done.
Ah, this is great! more of this!
This is great Jesus! I have always wanted to use the one arm press. The art school I used to work at had a huge one that was used when printing pieces as big as 4″ x 8″, but I was too busy cleaning up after students to give it a try. I was wondering if there are any specific difficulties using this press vs. hand printing. Is the pressure more or less consistent. Thanks for posting.
Getting the pressure is the trick, I can control that from how i hold the handle. This is similar to hand printing, it just takes a few pulls to get the hang of it. A large solid is more complicated, than the small areas, like in the picture above. Right now i can print as big as 26×40, I’m working on setting it up for 36×44.
I was at the Escuela de Cultura Popular Martires del 68 with Santiago and Thea the other night. There is a one arm press there, which Santi used to print a 34″x24″ piece.
I was wondering if printing on a “machine” like this would be better for folks that get tendonitis and other disabling problems from the typical squeegee pulling.
Yeah, I like it because it’s less stress on my back. I’ve also heard form a friend that it’s less stress on his elbows.