Solar plate printing is a safer alternative to some other intaglio printing methods.

If only it wasn't so expensive!

In June I attended my second solarplate workshop. As with the workshop last year I was really stimulated by this relatively simple technique. (There are lots of demonstrations on line in making and printing the solarplates.)
But by the time you add in exchange rates and postage an eight by ten plate can cost $30! And add a stochastic plate and that can be another $50. Admittedly you can use the stochastic plate (used for exposing transparencies to make intaglio printing plates.) over and over.
Another problem is the difficulty in cutting the solarplates as the active gel surface has a thin piece of metal as a base.
You could also add in the cost of a UV light but free sunlight is available fairly often here so that is not a real worry.

 One of the blocks I made at the workshop was based on a photo I took years ago of some old tractors. I had fun playing around with the photo in Photoshop Elements. But eventually I cropped to one tractor and made it a black and white picture. See the top tractor picture.

A print of the tractor was copied onto a transparency. This was used to make the solarplate. The plate was first exposed to UV light with the stochastic plate next to it and then with the transparency of the tractor next to it. A heavy piece of glass was used to keep the transparency perfectly flat against the solarplate. It only takes a few minutes for this part of the process.

Once cleaned and matured I used the solarplate to make several proofs. This was intaglio printing so the ink (green in this case) was worked well into the indentations of the plate and then the plate well wiped to leave the surface clean.

The plate was printed in the intaglio manner-- plate ink side up on the press base, damp printing paper placed carefully onto the plate. More paper to protect the felts. Felts down and the whole run through the press.

Relief plates can be made without using the stochastic plate. You can mark directly on the plate with black printing ink or some pencils and markers. This needs experimenting to find out which materials totally block out the light.

Then the plate is exposed to the UV light as before. The exposed plate cleaned and scrubbed and then matured as before. But the plate is inked in the relief manner with a brayer and printed as you would normally print a relief plate. I would like to spend some time playing with making relief prints using solarplates.