OUGD505 - Covered - Embossing and Printing Process

I spent a while testing out different settings on the laser cutter to get the right depth and clarity of cut in the wood I was making my embossing blocks out of. The first one clearly shows I had the file set up wrong, the second wasn't deep enough and was slightly pixelated, the third one fixed the pixelation but not the depth, and the fourth setting was pretty perfect.

The final A4 embossing blocks came out like this, and took ages to cut out because of the size, this is a part of the process I would look to refine in future. I also cut out the stencils on the laser cutter but in thin, sturdy card. I chose this material to make it easier for me when it came to the painting.

 

After the paper had been embossed I tried applying the lambs blood through the stencil, but it was far too runny and leaked under the stencil, making it completely illegible. It also dried a horrible yellowy-brown colour, which doesn't make it clear that it's blood.

I tried mixing the blood with the red paint block in this tin I had in my cupboard to thicken it slightly and give it a deeper red colour. Whilst the result was a slight improvement, it wasn't striking enough and didn't look as powerful as I wanted it too.

I got some red ink from the print room and mixed some blood into it. This allowed me to have a deeper colour, thicker printing material and still use the blood. This was done in the knowledge that vangardist magazine mixed blood with the ink successfully. This gave me a much deeper colour without having anywhere near as much running. 

I did a couple of practice runs with some of embossed paper.

This was my final poster

This was the final sleeve

 

Whilst the printed version does the concept more justice than the laser printed version, I'm a bit sceptical as to weather it was worth all the time and effort for it. It's definitely an improvement on the cover of my copy of the book though, and it was nice to do a project that was a bit more hands on than my other projects.

The text on the final poster does look a bit like Resolution Sans, the Jonathan Barnbrook font I used for the headings in my Study Task 3.