Process and Production @process-productionjuliag-smith - Tumblr Blog

Tuesday 21st April - 10 final images from In Praise of Water for Process and Production.

Tuesday 21st April - more Images and range of options for hanging. Fixing were to cellophane. I removed the window of Cellophane so that the materiality of the work would be more evident. I chose to mount each piece to maximise the compositions. I made all the decisions about this, and Gary at The Framing workshop did all the work for £60.

Tuesday 21st April - Images and range of options for hanging. In the end I chose to hang the work that I best felt exemplified the project In Praise of Water.

21st April 26 - Images from installation day. I took time to measure the space, because I wasn’t sure out of the prints I had prepared, what I would choose to hang. This was because I didn’t altogether like my last A2 prints which were made with finals in mind. I felt my best work was done on 25th March, but it was on a smaller scale. There was also a lack of consistency in the paper i used, some my own from A2 Sketchbooks i had at home, which had an ivory tinge, but i liked that aspect.

A set of 3 Finals of 3D relief panels I had organised but didn’t manage to get done in the time. With mentoring from Lorna Mitchell, I was reasonably content that I would obtain finals from my print work, but I made preparations anyway, should they not be good enough, because this was something I could do at home. At 8” x 8” (MDF) boards, they were also low maintenance and easily transportable.

The materials are a malleable substrate; material surface, painted in watercolour gold leaf and metallic paint and pen; then varnished to fix the paint and gold leaf. (Optional). I thought a range of textures would reflect the diversity of my visual water research.

Bought Digital Photo Frame on Amazon, same day delivery on Saturday 18th April. Users agreement I had to read before i could upload all my visual research and video for display in my bay for assessment on Wednesday 22nd April. Many of the images are in the tumblr.

Notes and materials i used in production on final print days, Wednesday 22nd April and Friday 24th April 2026.

Friday 24th April - Pic I. For my final print attempts, in the manner taught to me on HNC by print-maker/tutor Ros Lawless, I carefully deckled an A2 sheet of Somerset Velvet for my last prints.

Pics 3-8 I’d saved the larger section of crimped lampshade material for a Final. I was aiming for a turbulent effect and strong colour saturation in my final attempt. I used Napthol Red RDCG63266, Phthalo Green GRCG43104, Process Blue, (Cyan) BLCG25291, Black BKCG1860, Ultramanine BLCG24283 and Opaque White WTCG83391 for my last three prints, with ghost images, and further prints from the saturated material. To maximise output and use up spare ink, I rollered both sides of the material, where possible ‘sandwiched’ the paper to be printed on, taking care to protect the bed and blankets on the press with adequate newsprint.

Pic 10 - As a result of the time since first making, the longer the time which causes the screen to be stained and harder to clean: along with most other student in the class, my original screen had been cleaned I made a new one, but had no further time to make new work from it.

#waves #patterns #sea power #prints #screenprinting #monoprint #juliagordonsmith

Final prints on Friday 24nd April, with one missing (a mono-print on black card, a final) which I omitted to photograph.

Pics 1-3 - i had washed the ink from earlier prints. Following discussion with my tutor Lorna Mitchell on or after 24th March, it was suggested I try to print beyond the margins of the rectangular design (wave collage) and break it up. I was not afraid of being messy, but until the prints were mounted, things looked a bit ropey. I was not sure any were good enough to be Finals.

Pics 4-5 - I printed double sided, as cutting stencils from the material took so long, I nearly didn’t have time to print and clear up by 4pm. Kirstie McKeen, Print Technician let me work fast, and helped finish cleaning an A2 Perspex I used for the largest of the 3 finals I made. Other prints were ghost images or using ink on the material. Surprisingly, I got consistent thumbs up for the simplicity of the aqua on black mono-print.

Pics 6-7 - Aqua I mixed and printed double sided, lining up the two available prints; one of three layers and the collaged wave design screen print on black paper. Layer 4 on the print in pic 5 successfully rescued this print. I was determined to, as i felt i had spoiled it. It was good as one layer.

Pic 8 - a 2nd ghost image of a mono-print which had gone off piste. This looks like part of In Praise of Water, whereas its predecessor did not.

Pic 9 - the replacement screen. I exposed the image the wrong way up as i was in a hurry, but it wasn’t needed anymore anyway. It was useful practise and a lesson.

Pic 10 - the silver I made which i used on print 4, and which dried on the screen. I’d mixed metallic ink and a natural product made -from seaweed, both bought at Cass Art, and not System 3, as advised in the guidelines. I used a screen printing bed I’d not used before, with sticky anchor screws. In the time adjusting the placement of the screen, and flooding it twice, the ink dried in, causing the irregularity, but i actually like that it didn’t obscure the original Battleship Grey/blue I’d mixed. This print and the A2 final on Somerset Velvet (which I didn’t select as a Final) had 4 layers.

Pic 1-I0 - was excited to use up bright orange and cyan ink on a palette of Vickie Curtiss’ which she was about to clean off the glass of one mono-printing table. I mixed the colours together and got acid yellow, and green.as it was thin , I applied the material by hand, and didn’t use the press to mono-print. I was in experimental mode, and on balance it was very risky. Even if i ruined the prints, it was worth a try.

Pic 9 - By some miracle the alignment of two printings head to toe of the wave motor screen print (dark red) had gone perfectly on 25th March but I didn’t like the ‘busyness; of the image. It wasn’t good enough for a Final, so decided to throw caution to the wind and sacrifice it to experimenting. Layers 2 and 3 were experimental and not very good. I felt I made big mistake with the design, the hand mono-printing, flooding the screen with blue (to soften the foregoing) the colours etc. I went on to add a 4th layer. The result was interesting. Others liked it, but I wasn’t sure.

Pic 10 - another good print I was prepared to ruin in the name of experimentation. Cropped in by a mount it improved it hugely.

Printwork 25th March 26

Pics 1-3 - With the Easter break coming up and a lack of printing days, I started work designing motifs and planning stencil designs.

Pics 4-8 - combining mono-print with motif image using the photographic exposure on the screen. After several try-outs, when I was more proficient at the placement of the Detritus motif, I changed colours, aiming for a layers effect which would give an impression of movement under water. This was on A2 card.

Pic 10. Notes from a consumption with Print Technician Drew, ahead of the Installation Proposal due at midnight on06.03.26.

Wednesday 25th March - Printwork made on this day.

Pic 1 - 24th February 26. An unpainted version of ‘Waves’ screen print on black A3 sugar paper, with less good results than the version I hand painted on tip of. A trial print for hardness of an analogous red on black (ROB).

Pic 2-4 - Hand painting on a print on black A3 card from CoGC supplies shop. I did this work without or before considering if the materials it was printed on, would make the time and effort worthwhile.

Pic 5 - first successful printing of Waves screen print and crimped material in analogous blues. I liked this print because as the borders float out of the paper borders, the motifs are reminiscent of flying creatures caught by the wind.

Pics 6 - 8 - Try-outs of placement of Detritus/Elements motif.

Pics 9 - 1st crimped material Mono-print in analogous colours of process blue mixed with white, a small amount of green, and an even smaller amount of black.

Pic 10 - I also felt this print was a success and was aiming to repeat on a larger scale for a a Final. As I felt i was beginning to exhaust this image and the screen needed renewed, i imagined this a would be an opportunity designing a new screen which could be reversed. With the Easter break coming up and a lack of printing days, I started work designing motifs and planning stencil designs.

Visual site specific research Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd February ‘26.

Annotations from my A5 Sketchbook including Artist Research and reading matter.

Pic 10 - Picturing Mind by John Danvers was a Buddhist treatise for artists, writers, thinkers and poets.

No picture to show, but another work I liked, borrowed from the City of Glagsow College library before Christmas, was E.H. Gombrich’s ‘Art and Illusion. A study in the Psychology of Pictoral Representation’

Page 46, quotation from Part One: The Limits of Likeness, 1. From Light into Paint -

“A cloud passing over the sun would change its brightness, and so might even a tilt of the head, or an approach from a different angle.

If what we call ‘Identity’ were not anchored in a constant relationship with the environment, it would be lost in the chaos of swirling impressions that never repeat themselves.“

This quote speaks to my impulse to depict water especially at the sites where I hail from and here I now live, as my existence and sense of place in the world has always, and continues to be, and as long as I am able to be near, my devotions will always be informed by it (hence I have given the project the title, In Praise of Water).

Ilana Halperin, though not a native, now lives and works in Glagsow. Her art is concerned with the individual’s relationship with the earth, the timelines of her own and the Earth’s development, the pulses and the infinitessimal yet evidently monumental changes which move mountains and continents across the glove. Meticulously Halperin charts the moments in which our own physical and emotional life intertwines with the Earth’s changes and history.

This exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery, (Edinburgh) -What Is Us and What is The Earth, followed Ilana’s journey through Field Encounters, to witness the evolution of volcano, Eldfell on the Island of Heimaey in the Icelandic Westman Islands. Her fluent and passionate observational paintings render her geologic samples into curiously simple, abstract statements which seem to pose questions about what we call ‘the past’, ‘the present’, and ‘the future’. (Review by Julia G-S).

Tanya Kovats is Professor of Drawing and Making at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, a wing of the University of Dundee. Her current situation is that she is recovering from Nuclear treatment for Thyroid Cancer, which made her radioactive, and at the same time she has been working on a further project of discovery into water and marine environments at a location in County Clare, Ireland. I first came across the work of Tanya Kovats through my colleague Vickie Curtiss in 2023, while we were both studying HNC Painting and Printmaking at Clyde College, Anniesland, Glasgow. Through her work and her vision, Kovats is dedicated to healing the current crisis between human beings and our relationship with Nature. She believes art is can be a kind of GPS for the soul to help us “navigate our way through this” (the Wick Culture Interview with Tanya Kovats, 2025) .

Tania Kovats has created ceramics, sculptures and installations, and works are inspired by the “non-human world."

#Youtube

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Process and Production