Reduction Printing this WOYWW!

Here's what I've been up to.....turning this into.....

THIS................

I've mentioned, a time or two, how much I enjoy carving my own stamps.  An article in the current issue of Cloth Paper Scissors caught my eye....using the same materials used for stamp carving, one could do something called "reduction printing".  Well, this looks like fun, I thought.

I did take the authors advice and start with a simpler, geometric design and then moved on to carving the cat into the soft Speedball product called Speedy Cut. 

I drew the cat on a piece of paper, drew back over it to put down a good coat of graphite....laid the drawing on the material I was going to carve, and rubbed enough to transfer the drawing to the rubber.

I, also, decided to cut the block of printing plate material in half, so I made a few changes in the drawing to adjust.  The finished size is only 2 1/2 x 3 inches.

Then I carved the image into the soft rubber....this is plate #1.

Just for your reference, below is what the plate looked like by the time I was ready to put down the third, and final, layer of paint.  You can see how much material was removed to achieve the final results.

  First, I covered the carved image with yellow acrylic paint and then printed them onto nine pieces of paper I had cut to fit, layer #1.

O.K., here's where it gets tricky....this is like watercolor, you must paint from light to dark but before you can put the next color on, you need to remove the parts of the stamp/plate where you want to preserve the lightest color.

When you are satisfied that you have removed the right amount of the stamp, you print the medium value.  In my case, I mixed yellow ocher with a little cad red to make a rust. 

Before, I stamped over the yellow paint (the first impression) I made a trial run.  I stamped on a scrap of paper using dye ink to see how this stamp/plate was going to look.

 

It is a little hard to see here but the top practice stamp was my first layer, here I stamped it in red but on the "real" product it is the yellow above.

The artist who wrote this article, Lisa Thorpe, prints the first layer a solid color but I like the white of the paper showing for this one.

 

 

The second layer is the red stamp on the top right.  You can see where I have removed material from the cat and the floor.

The green stamp on the top right is the final trim.  More material was removed from the cat, the window and the floor.

Bottom left is the final layer stamped over the second and the first!  Whew, got all that?

I did use a brayer to ink the stamp/plate each time before I stamped.

Not every print turned out as well as I would have hoped but I learned a lot!  I'm ready to try again.  Oh, yes, the final color I used was violet....it made a delicious dark.

This was the first geometric design I tried......now, I have two practice runs under my belt. 

The finished print is about half the size of this photo but it still a very strong piece.  

These would be great for cards, tags or to collage to a piece OR to mount and frame!  Plus, in most cases, you can still use the finished stamp/plate as a stamp on other projects.

This is what is on my workdesk this Wednesday......to see what fun things other artists are doing go to Julia's What's on your workdesk Wednesday and a new to me fun blog party for "copy cats", love it, Debbie Doos Magazine Copy Cat Challenge