I am a neat person, as well as a clean one. While I appreciate patina on certain antiques, I don’t seek it out. This predisposition doesn’t always serve me well in the studio, though. Sometimes it is best to praise being messy.
Who knew that repelling materials could create such beauty?
The above image is the result of not cleaning off my polycarbonate plate after I printed. You can see the fainter circles and roller marks, which are remnants of the previous inking. In some places, solvent has dried the pigments on the plate, resulting in places that print white. Below is what the plate looked like after the first printing. (You can see my non-slip mat beneath the almost transparent plate.)
Old ink, brayer marks and solvent-dried areas repel the new ink in interesting ways. I would never be able to create these marks intentionally. I think of it in the same way that human beings are probably incapable of doing things that are completely random. You can read an engaging, philosophical article about this here.
Above is a view of the entire 24 x 18in plate, inked and printed for a second time. I just love how the colors mix and layer on the plate, creating something completely surprising on the paper. You can read more about how I work with collage papers in this blog.
So I will sometimes leave the plate unclean, because you never know… The studio itself is clean, however. Can’t have the studio cats tracking ink everywhere!
Gingersnap’s beautiful! But you said “cats,” plural. May we see the other cat(s) too, please?
Mittens the polydatcyl is a much more stealthy cat. She loves to sit on my collage paper piles. I think she likes the crinkly feeling. But as soon as you reach for your iPhone, she runs away.