Experimental gocco print, day 5

Spent a couple of hours in the afternoon working on the mock-up of the print, trying to figure out what it was about it that I didn't quite like. Took me a while, but I finally figured out the the horse's body needs to be lighter.

So here I've just put down a layer of white. This is still using the same open screen that I've been using all along, with the horse shape cut out of a self adhesive label.



Then I decided it needed to be just a touch whiter, so I hit it again, only this time very quickly and lightly. So this image has "one and half presses" of the white:



Here's the cut out of the horse shape. Cut with an exacto knife.



Then I finally had to flash a whole new screen to print the horse itself! This is the first screen I've had to flash in all these different layers that I've printed. I didn't want it to be black (I thought it would be too stark), but looking at this now, I think it looks rather washed out. So I may need to go back and print black (or at least very dark brown) on top of it. But I'll let it sit for a couple of days first. Both because I want to think about it, and also because I MUST return to work on the flowers web site starting from tomorrow.



So here are about half of the prints drying on the drying rack.



This print has been a complete experiment, and there were lots of mistakes and gotchas, which hopefully I won't make again, at least not too many more times...hah! I think I might get 8 good prints (if even that many) out of the 22 I printed. Of course, if I print another black or dark brown layer over the horse, there might be further reduction in the number of good prints left. We'll see.

Tomorrow, silk road flowers again!