Printmaking 07: Mark-making – Queen of Night (preparation)

By 26th March 2008August 21st, 2018Blog


The purpose of this print is to explore the possibilities of illustrating directly onto mark-relief film. This image started as a tracing of a postcard (a photograph) of the Queen of the Night relief from the British Museum, using india ink markers, graphite, a water-based calligraphy pen and coloured pencil. Given that the relief is a couple of centuries old and bits have fallen off — most notably the owl’s beaks, but also parts of her head-dress/hair and portions of her right hand — I’ve had to extrapolate and fill in using my imagination.

I’m not optimistic about retaining the coloured pencil, but hopefully the rest of the image should come through. This will be done as a standard screenprint. The image strikes me as too busy to try and manipulate further.