Tentacle Bird Gocco Prints

All I have to say is: this is way too much fun...and a dangerously addictive reason for me to acquire tons of awesome paper.

The image is from a sketch I did in my Natural History Drawing class last fall. Yes, it's a real bird--I can't take credit for coming up with the tentacle bird on my own. The drawing was done at the Harvard Natural History Museum and the bird is a Central American Bell-Bird.

Printed on 5"x5" curry colored cards (from Paper Source) in brown ink. Below you can see photos of the process.


Setting up to burn the master. You can see that the photocopy is placed on the grey padded area on the bottom part of the press.


After burning the master, with the original still attached.


Ink!


Setting up for the first "real" print (you can see my test print on the desk to the right).


Success! The paper looks orange in this photo...color in the next photo is more accurate.


And more success! I made a lot more prints than would fit on the rack...they ended up all over my bed and on various flat surfaces around my room.


I printed until the ink began running out. Here you can see a few bare patches.


Last but not least: CLEAN-UP. It wasn't fun, but I think I managed to get it clean. Holding it up to the light shows that the ink has been removed from the design area. I followed the steps on this page, which is part of a very helpful resource database called NEHOC.

I dub this experiment a success! Now where am I supposed to keep all these prints...