tales from a printmaking student

I wasn’t sure what to expect for my first printmaking class at the Kingston School of Art. My experience in printmaking had been limited to carving to some lino blocks bought at the local art store and wishing I had taken printmaking during my BFA. At first, I was a little intimidated by the magnitude of information I was given, so many different techniques and types of printing. Do I play with colour and voids on a piece of plexi to create an one-off monoprint? Or do I learn the process of preparing and carving into a zinc plate, producing something that can be re-inked and reproduced? As I learned more and more, I realized the depth of possibilities were huge and fit a variety of processes and people.
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Every student in the class has a different approach. And all the teachers and assistants are quite different in their methods as well. The environment is one encouragement and experimentation. This is a place, where one can explore their own techniques while learning from what others are doing. One of the students has taken up embossing, using the printing press to press cut-out shapes into paper, adding depth to her figure drawings. I am playing with color and geometric forms on a carved plexi plate. And another student is exploring lino with different carving tools, paper and surfaces. The magnitude of possibilities makes this an interested medium with multiple channels to investigate, something you could spend a lifetime exploring.

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