Printing and Pressing.

Having collected a variety of flora and fauna i wanted to use these to create beautifully accurate prints to hopefully use within my designs. Achieving perfect prints definately took some practice. I quickly learnt not to put whole, fresh flower heads through the press as they exploded and printed a lovely mush on the paper. I learnt to dry my pieces out for a few days before printing and to try to press them prior to printing with ink so that the shape was slightly more crisp.

Once i got the hang of it i began to experiment with placement, layering and even adding a bit of text using John's metal letter stamps (thanks John!). Here are a few i made earlier!

All images Copywright Daisy Waite 2012

I am really pleased with these prints. The hardest part is finding intersting pieces to print with and then not ruining them in the press before you have created a nice print! The lat of the three above shows the direction i want to head in really referencing botanical documentation. Here are a few more from my second print session.

Development has been made with this second batch of prints in terms of selection of pieces and their composition has been more carefully thought about. At the moment i am printing to create a varied body of imagery to design with however i feel some of these prints could work really well on their own at a very large scale. I am particularly pleased with the quality of lettering achieved using metal letter stamps. All the text is printed and lined up by eye. This 'Vulgaris' print is a very successful print, others werent so good!

Continuing on from this session, i went onto experiment further with the styles of composition and what i was printing onto. I decided to see how fabrics worked through the press and much to my surprise they worked jst as well as paper providing a clean, textured print.



I am really pleased with the additional textures and details achieved when printing onto fabrics. These prints were on cotton duck, quite a thick, speckled fabric.