Monday 2 Oct

This week, we started our second project: Linocut Print on Monday. We had an induction session at the print room, Y01, and did some practice using the Columbian press. The press was quite old and we needed to be strong enough to use it. After the induction session, we started to cut our lino plate.

The cutting process was not new to me but I learnt to use the registration board to hold the plate and made the cutting process easier and safer. Furthermore, I learnt to use graphite to rub the plate on thin paper such as newsprint to have a look at how the printed outcome might be. However, the direction of the image would be the same as the plate but not the printed outcome. It’s easy to forget so I think I have to bear this in mind when doing so.

 

 

I didn’t manage to finish cutting and printing the first colour on Monday because I had to print the light colour first but the plate of this colour was on the second plate. I had to finish the first plate then used it to register the image on the second plate, then I was able to cut it. I planned to finish printing next Monday.  Fingers crossed on the printing process!

 

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Tuesday 3 Oct

We had a review of our first project: 7 Days, 7 Projects on Tuesday.

It was great and interesting to see everyone’s projects and the inspiration behind them. Jimmy, Abby and Hana were really good at making things by hand. I was amazed by the tiny and neat projects they created! Phil was good at drawing but I thought he should try more different ways to produce his works. Joana was already skilful and talented at drawing and I loved to read her sketchbook. Mauro was good at creating digital images. I enjoyed his images combined with the items in daily life. Willnon’s ideas were great but some of them were not easy to understand. I knew most of Garbo’s works before the review day but I was still amazed by the theatre box she created.

I was happy that I had tried different materials to create works. It’s quite challenging to try new things but now I understood that I would never learn without trying something new.

 

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Thursday 5 Oct

 

 

We had group meetings and process review of the research task on Thursday. Not until this day did I know that learning how to collaborate with each other was one of the important things I should learn here.

To tell the truth, it was not easy to work as a group when we only meet few days in a week. Also, we had so many other works to do at the same time. As a result, it was important for us to learn how could we work together without seeing each other often and how could we communicate our ideas in a long distance. Plus, these were the situation we would meet in the future when we collaborated with someone else outside the university. Thus, what I learnt was that it’s better to be more flexible and easy to be contacted with.