failed prints

Printing is all about practice and perseverance, it also takes a lot of patience to get results. Sometimes it would take me a week of printing to only get one successful print, but the key to successful and strong work is to not loose heart! There were times were I wanted to throw the towel in because one day the printing press tension wouldn't be right and my prints wouldn't work, or the ink was inconsistent, or I hadn't washed my hands as well as I thought I had and the paper was ruined. All of these factors contribute to how well or bad work turns out. Firstly you need to think a lot about preparation, you need a clear workspace and lots of organisation , this works! Clear a space and get all your tools ready, roll out your ink, and make sure the area is clean, the tension is set and your paper is soaking. Another thing to watch out for is paper packing, paper packing is placed into the printing press to add tension and protect your work from marks and spills, it is important the packing is either made new , in my circumstance it was due to the fact I was create a lot of final outcomes, and I didn't really have time to be ruining prints with dodgy packing. Once all of these things are done you are ready to print. There are many different plates which allow you to print at different scales, this is trial and error, as I tried to print at large scale and no prints worked successfully, it was a massive struggle to get a good print, and after several tries it failed to work. So I decided to stick to small scale prints, which happened to work beautifully and even more effective. It's amazing how one small print can hold so much definition and detail, compared to the work I was creating at the start of the year in printing I have massively improved not only in skill but also mind, this time round au wasn't half as negative towards my own work.