Friday, November 12, 2010

Solarplate Prints


This is a little drawing I did on mylar for my first attempt at creating a Solarplate print. A Solarplate is a thin steel plate prepared with a light-sensitive polymer surface. A transparency (the mylar) is placed on the plate and exposed to a light source. Then the plate is developed in a water bath and printed like any intaglio plate. This product is made by the Daniel Smith Co.

My instructor at my printmaking class took me through all the steps. First we made a test print to check the timing of the exposure. The image below is the print from the test strip. We then created the plate with all three snowmen. I will be printing from that one at my next class. It's a really awesome technique because one's drawing reproduces so perfectly---all the subtle shading and lines remain in the printed image.



3 comments:

  1. Wow! That is really cool! Thanks so much for sharing the process. Very interesting. (I love the snowmen too! Adorable!)

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  2. This is very cool! Thanks for sharing.

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  3. I like how the snowmen look so bundled up! It's interesting how the print maintains all the subtleties. I have never tried this type of printmaking. Sounds fun!

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