From ‘Lueur d'espoir’ to ‘Ray of hope’, the reinvention of a reduction print

... on the occasion of the international print exchange 2021 Printer Solstice

I had the honour of being chosen to take part in the international print exchange Printer Solstice for which I just sent an edition of 27 of this print to the USA. Two sets will be auctioned for charity and will benefit SGC International, three prints will be given to the sponsors of this challenge and the rest will be sent to all the printmakers involved. I will share with you the superb collection of prints I am soon going to receive! Meanwhile, here is the story of the creation of this print…

2020 - 2021 The Printer Solstice challenge

In 2020/2021 I took part in the third #Prinstersolstice Instagram Challenge. This challenge unfolds on the twelve weeks of the winter season and consists in producing a print per week in response to a prompt set by the two American co-hosts Susana McDonnell @linocaveprints and Mindy Schumacher @follysomeprints. This year the prompts were as follows :

Printer Solstice challenge 2021 prompts

Last winter I made nine prints out of the twelve suggested. I took the opportunity of this challenge to experiment each week a new technique, a new colorway, new motives… Each week contestants could win prizes from the sponsors :

• a feature on @im_printed the printmakers virtual gallery which has more than 133000 followers

• an inky prize from Speedball

• gouges by Flexcut tools

Each one could also apply for being part of the Printer Solstice international print exchange whose chosen participants would be designated at the end of the challenge... Find more information on this page.

“Lueur d’espoir”, winner of the Speedball inky prize in week 2

Week 2 prompt was 'A new hope': I made a four colours reduction print. Each colour is applied onto the previous one and the same block is carved in between each inking and pressing (to discover the reduction printing method, please follow this link).

Here is the print I made on this occasion. This print was the lucky winner of the Speedball inky prize. I later gave it away for the #oneofmanypostcard charity fundraiser

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‘Ray of hope’ the reinvention of ‘Lueur d’espoir’, for the international print exchange Printer Solstice

Having been one of the lucky contestants to be chosen to take part to the Printer Solstice print exchange, I had to recreate my print.

'Lueur d’espoir’ being a reduction print, I could not just reprint it. I took this opportunity to reinvent it: I endeavoured to render more finely the light and its reflection on the bottom of the sea and I made a good use of the Speedball ink I had won thanks to ‘Lueur d’espoir’. Since that time, I also had made progress on my registration technique (for those of you interested in technique, I used the Terne Burton pins and tabs).

Here is Ray of hope, 4 colours reduction print, edition of 27 for this exchange.

A small very confidential version with a variation on the fourth colour has also been made.

A small varied edition is available

Because it is not possible to go back and because the process is quite...risky, I had made more than 27 prints of the first colour. Layer after layer I lost a few prints… When I reached the fourth colour and that 27 good prints and two Artist’s proofs were made I stopped my edition.

Out of the very few prints left, I applied a different fourth colour, thus making a varied edition which I labelled EII from 1 to 7 (plus two artist’s proofs).

During the process, I showed the steps of the creation of this print on Instagram and an American collector purchased the print 1/7 of this edition before it was even finished; the rest of this edition is available in my shop.