WHAT A RELIEF!

WEEK 1: LEARNING

Reasons for choosing this departmental elective (RELIEF PRINTING) - it was all because of this amazing print lab thing we have been hearing from every corner right after coming in NID. It all looked cool place from the start and we always heard about ‘there we do fun things’. The first time I get to experience this when we were introduced with the course Print Production & Book Binding. It was a lot theoritical in the beginning & later on we all get to know all the machinaries in there, how they work & get to take prints and make our own self binded books too. I still wanted to have more hands on with those machinaries & was already waiting for it, finally this course got me in as one of those 7 students who took up. And now when I completed the course of two weeks I feel like I know about this place more, the process of taking relief prints in different ways also a lot more. I can answer today for the question “When was the last time you did something for the first time?”. I can say now is the time when I did take relief printing by myself by creating my own designed lino, posters, typesetting etc. I couldn’t have learned the process more easily or playfully except from Sir or except being here. It is this simple now - Raised parts are basically image area, which catches ink when pressure is applied on it.

WEEK 2: LEARNING

We took prints of both the lino1 & 2 by hand as well as with machine, to understand the difference. Found beauty in hand printed ones more.

For the final assignment in a group of two me & Isha decided on a poster idea. It was the time to apply all the learning until now. So we decided on layout.

We combined illustration & typography. We carved our illustrated owl on foamboard/sunboard, which was altogether a new sort of learning. Where Lino sheets looked tough initially to carve, it was different experience all of a sudden to cut with cutter in particularly ‘V’ direction. Lino was giving a liberty to use different tools but here only cutter worked on foamboard. We used laser cut wooden typeface for the intricate parts of our typographic layouts. And we also did typeset on letterpress. Altogether we tried to keep a combination like this so that we could practice also as much as poccible before the course gets over. The prints came out really wonderful. Even though the process were too tiring but it was one of the best times. We also learned the techniques of nylo from other group’s way of taking relief printing. Other than wooden laser cuts, nylo was another way of getting intricate raised surfaced done. It was all very interesting process.

I also enjoyed the process of colour mixing for making special colours with different types of colour families.