Lessons in Potato Printing
I finally got round to trying my hand at potato printing. Before I started, I thought, how hard could it be? After all, tiny ten-thumbed primary school children do it every day of the year.
Although it was not in fact difficult at all, there were a few things I learned in the process:
- Cut through your potato straight as possible using a very sharp knife (not recommended for said tiny ten-thumbed primary school children)
- Make sure your paint is not 15 years old and either dried up in the tube, or separated into oil and pigment, with the oil all in the top of the tube
- An even not-too-thick, not-too-thin consistency of paint is best (I call this the Goldilocks principle); a palette knife is helpful in spreading the paint
- A lot more pressure than expected is required when stamping
Potatoes get the chop!My first few heart stamps bled all over the place. This was disheartening (later when they had dried, I decided I rather liked these bleeding hearts). The next series of hearts were all stumpy and broken. On my third go I managed to stamp a few acceptable hearts with judicious manipulation of my wonkily-cut potato, (although in my heart I felt this was cheating).
I plan to create some fun surface patterns from these impressions. Until then, check out the fun Hipstamatic pics on my Facebook page.
*Apologies for all the puns.
