Printmaking 15: Markmaking – directly drawing on mark resist film

By 25th May 2008August 21st, 2018Blog

This is another relatively unsuccessful trial of a technique that seemed to offer so much. I say ‘unsuccessful’, but it only didn’t work for the purpose that I originally intended … to draw comics directly onto the mark resist film and then be able to print from them. I’m still confidently optimistic that mark resist is valuable for creating backgrounds and textures.

Compare the subtleties of the original drawing against the printed results below and you see what I mean … As a direct production technique for a comic book this leaves something to be desired. The very qualities that make my drawings attractive are lost on the way and it seems rather pointless to introduce another step into the comic-making process. Drawing and then scanning into Photoshop & printing digitally, in this case, gives a much better result.

On the other hand, the ink splatters are lovely. And once the finished drawings are available digitally, printing them onto inkjet transparencies and then creating a screen from them might just work. It would necessarily be a limited edition book, but that’s OK. I haven’t sold any yet, anyway.

Luna Blue is a character that was created during the Christmas holiday when visiting the family in 2007. Thanks are due to Debra for the name (and to baby Cheyenne for not needing it) and to Rayla for helping me flesh out the character and giving me the idea of Thoth, the ibis.