Back Drawing

So, here are a few back drawn pieces. The learning curve was slow then a big improvement when I read some fellow OCA student's blogs and learnt some tricks.

 My first two attempts. I had an inked up plate already used for mask experiments and just improvised. The ink thickness / weight of paper combinations will always require practice for every new kind of ink or paper.

This example was drawn from life. I find it very interesting that a simple drawing like this takes on a completely new quality in this context. If this was drawn in pencil it would be very plain. I think the uniformity of the value of the marks combined with the patches of accidentally transferred ink creates a new aesthetic.

These are the first of a series of experiments drawn from life of gourds. The second print used two colours. I did not let the first layer dry before adding the second so a fine layer of the orange stuck to the black creating an interesting effect. I drew on the back of the paper with pencil so it was easy to add multiple layers.

I next tried to do back drawing over a masked print. The same combination of ink and paper did not work because the ink stuck to the already printed areas very easily.

I used less ink and got better results here. I traced the outline on the back of the paper but these were not as well aligned as I hoped.

For these better examples I used a copy of a drawing to create the mask. I then used a copy of the same drawing as a guide for the back drawing, giving me better alignment and keeping the back of the paper clean. I used a very lightly inked plate that was quite dry and a ball point pen. I love the subtlety of this despite the simple design and now feel confident to use this combination of techniques in more complicated designs.