Sun Mar 30, 2025
These are my first experimental prints using xuan paper. The paper is so thin that when printing on one side, the ink easily seeps through the fibers and becomes visible on the other.
At the same time, I began experimenting with surface textures on the cardboard. In the print featuring hands, I adhered tissue paper onto the cardboard using a glue stick, creating random folds and textures. When inking the plate, I didn’t fully cover this area with ink; instead, I used a piece of gauze to lightly dab ink over the surface. This helped preserve the texture more effectively. The actual result turned out to be quite satisfactory.
In the other two prints, I experimented with using masking tape to create texture. However, the outcome was not ideal—the tape’s surface was too rough, and the print came out entirely black, not much different from cardboard with the glossy surface layer removed.
Still, I saw other potential uses for the tape. It can serve as a temporary black surface, unlike peeled cardboard, which is irreversible once altered. In the print with a human silhouette, I tried not to ink all of the rough areas. Although this version’s outcome was just average and the texture wasn’t highly controllable, the approach itself—using texture to enrich the image—seems promising.