A New Printing Press Project

The latest project I have completed for Drawing 2 is another painting using the printing press. This one is very different than the others though. The others were made by carving a plate into the picture you wanted. This one was done by building the plate out of shapes cut from mat board.

To begin with, we had to come up with design ideas. This was what I started with, though my final plate was sort of a combination of both ideas.

I seem to have a thing for outer space. Celestial bodies have become a prominent feature in a lot of my artwork lately.
Next I cut everything out and assembled them into the final plate.

I used some large black paper for the background for some, but they did not turn out very well. I ended up using too much paint and there was quite a bit of smearing when they came through the press. For my two final prints I wanted better backgrounds than just plain black, so I rolled my own paint onto white paper and let them dry for a week.

I finished my two final paintings today. Instead of rolling on the paint using a roller, this time I used brushes to get the paint on a little more precisely.
The board itself looks like some sort of an impressionist painting now.

These are the final paintings as they are drying and flattening. I will post better images, including the not so good ones, at the end of the semester when I get my work back.