“Lady with Flowers” “Beautiful”
Both relief prints are done on mulberry paper, size 24×35.5″ (printed area), limited edition 1/50 each.
These prints really were kind of difficult for me to print on my press because of the size and details. I wasn’t considering the size of my printing press when designing such large scale prints. They do fit on the printing press bed but the paper which has to be somehow larger than the print barely fit onto it which made it really difficult to handle everything. Besides it was challenging to get the paper that I wanted because most papers come in smaller sizes. I ended up cutting the sizes I needed from a paper roll. I still was limited to certain papers with barely any color choices. After printing a few test prints I ended up with a natural colored paper. Each print is manually worked on with either silver and blue or gold and red acrylics and watercolors.
Because I do work a little messy around all the ink (unfortunately) I do cover up all negative space (larger areas) on my lino cut with precisely cut tracing paper which keeps the paper clean from extra ink that’s not supposed to be there. Probably not the way to work but it helps me a lot.
I cannot really explain how I came up with the images but I was intrigued with bird cages and flowers. The first print was the caged woman with a flower dress (gold/ silver). My idea behind it was to make the woman and her outfit really beautiful comparable to an exotic beautiful bird that would be hold in a cage. The additional cages were added to fill up the negative space without taking the focus off the woman.
As soon as I was done creating this image I wanted something similar for another print. I came up with the lady on the staircase. To tie it to my first print I added the flower dress as well.
Both the staircase as well as the cages are simply structured lineal designs which I wanted as a contrast to the ‘busy’ organic shapes of the flowers.
Even though right now I would say “never again such a large scale print” I am really pleased with the results and maybe after finishing the full two editions I am experienced enough to go for another large design – maybe….
