Printing Project

For our final art project, we were each assigned an element. I was assigned the element Potassium which has an atomic number of 19. Potassium was discovered by Sir Davy Humprey in England in the year 1807. This was the first element to be isolated using the process of electrolysis. This is a process where an electric current to extract something from a piece of material. Before potassium was formally discovered potassium carbonate and animal fat were combined in order to make soap. This is what gave me the idea to make my print be of soap. I wanted to do something that not many people would know of. To do this, why not go back to the beginning?

Making the actual print took a few steps. The first step was to draft ideas for what our print was going to be. Once we had chosen our design we had to transfer it to a piece of tracing paper. Once this was done we etched the design onto a plate. Then you move onto printing. To do this, you first, roll ink onto your plate. Once this is done you put a paper on top of your plate and use a spoon to transfer the ink from a plate to your paper. After all of the prints are dried you can choose to either matt or not matt them. No matter which way you choose you have to cut out the leftover paper that is around your printed piece. If you do choose to matt you glue your printed square to piece of colored paper. Your final step is to measure out one inch from your image and then cut your paper using that measurement. Below is my final product

Overall, I really enjoyed this project. I think my favorite part was actually making my design- drawing it. I really liked getting to see an idea become more than an idea.

Looking back, if I could do this project over again I would probably want to spend more time working on the actual skill of printing the final product.