Making artprints in professional studio

 

I spent my Valentine's Day with my great love: art! I had a chance to make artprints in Printmaking Studio Himmelblau and I enjoyed a lot of my day. Himmelblau situates in the middle of Tampere city center, next to Tammerkoski-rapids. Studio is specialized all traditional, artisanal printmaking, from woodcuts to etchings. There are working professional printmakers that are helping the artists to get the best of printmaking. Mr. Marko Lampisuo helped me, Marko is master in printmaking and has been working in Himmelblau already over 25 years.

The view from the window is very special as you can see! Studio is in an old factory, Finlayson & Co, that used to make cotton textiles and yarns from 19th century untill the beginning of 1990's. Before the printmaking studio, this space was used as a storage room for cotton bales. Tammerkoski-rapids is regarded as one of the National Views in Finland.

Printmaker Marko Lampisuo had prepared for me two plates: the other for hard ground etching and the other for soft ground etching. I'll tell more about those in the next posts!

As a simple version: artist does the design and printmaker does the "dirty work";

Printmaker prepares the plate, then artist draws the picture on the plate, then printmaker puts the varnish on the backside of the plate and puts the plate to the acid, cleans the plate, puts the wanted color on the plate, cleans it and makes the print with printing machine.

Normally the prints made by professional printmakers are much better than those made by artists (if they are not really specialized to printmaking, of course). Himmelblau is one of the leading printmaking studios on Nordic countries so the work is perfect. Even Sean Scully, Richard Deacon and Anj Smith have been working here!

There is one small manual printmaking machine and two big machines used with electricity. My works were done with this one. The pressure is as big as the weight of a car. You recognize the real etching from the imprint of the picture. It comes when printmaking machine presses the soft and moist printing paper tightly on the metal plate.

When the prints are ready, they are put on the wall to dry that the paper won't get curvy. Here are mine! I was very happy with the result. More about my works in the next posts.