Firstly, I'd like to take this chance to thank the people who have been interacting with me since agreeing to participate in my "Getting Got" interactive art project; Max Brooker, Ines Monguio, Meghant Metcalfe and Cindy Davis have been enriching my life by feeding back their responses to my work and I will be sharing my discoveries here when it relates to techniques I've developed or learned while making the 2024-2025 GOT-O-GRAM.
You may be wondering what links this set of prints and what it has to do with introductory text referencing another project. You see, I used the last remnants of an engraving ink I had made myself for use in the GOT-O-GRAM; it was the first time I've ever tried to make oil paint and it was almost total guesswork based on the use of some devices which I'd attained to make the ink (but which I had no idea would actually work): a Chinese spice grinder and a rice cooker. Firstly, I whizzed a combination of charcoal and green pastel coloured chalk into fine powder a bit like, well, a Chinese traditional doctor would create rhinocerus tusk powder for an erectile dysfunction medecine. It was a very dark black with a hint of green. I then placed this in a blending device and poured enough linseed oil until a paste formed and I knew the dust was already in contact with the oil. After this, I melted beeswax in linseed oil in a metal bowl I'd put in the rice cooker; then I mixed the waxy oil into the tinted linseed paste in the blender. This final activity of blending the two together seems to be an important part of the process. What I ended up with was a very thick and slick paste. I knew I was onto something when I noticed the way the paste retained its thickness but was without lumps of any kind. The beeswax must've played an important role in this process.
The five plates I made prints of and which you can view below were all different, and as far as I can see although the prints are far from ideal, I nonetheless made them in a few minutes to test the limits of my ink. I used it for a couple of contrasting relief prints into oil cloths, an intaglio plexiglass plate, a 2-plate gotograph ... and an etching I made into a pcb plate by plunging the copper plate into an upright acid bath I'd invented for this purpose called a "zaquarium".
Okay, the etching doesn't look good at all; but in this case I included the comparison with the print I'd made from the same plate using the thick engraving ink I already had and which people had told me was too difficult to make myself. As you can see, both prints are similar and the fact that the dark green one is lighter is more to do with the fact that there was very little ink left at the end. You can see the little grooves that were etched into the pcb plate. Making this goes to show that you can etch into the pcb plates you can pick up from any electrics shop. They are cheap but the copperplating is sufficiently thick to make plates with.
Here is a list of these prints:
0/5 - REMNANTS OF BEESWAX - Cover
1/5 - HEADLESSLY
2/5 - I DEFY OCTOPI
3/5 - STILL SLEEPING
4/5 - AARGH!
5/5 - ACID BATH FOR ETCHING (acid bath etched in a zaquarium with intaglio style inking)
I describe the method I used to make the ink in a previous post, and I'll be including here later a more detailed explanation of this method.
Anyway, I had a small patch of it on a glassy surface, and since everthing was wrapping up but I still had this ink, I scraped up every last remnants and tried it on various different types of printing plates using various different types of printing methods I've been experimenting with recently.
Although the prints themselves may not appear that striking, it seems to me astounding that I was successful at applying the ink to all the different surfaces and to make prints from them.
Now that I've achieved this - and I can basically turn anything into dust, I plan to try all sorts of ingredients. To the melted waxy oil solution? I've also been adding coloured crayons and scented oils to change the texture, shift the final colour shade and... well... make the ink smell!
REMNANTS OF BEESWAX
