The project started with the obtainment of four old linoleum floorings. Cutting the plates into 33x66 centimeter pieces seemed like a sizeable enough amount of work to be able to complete during the course of 3 months.
After washing the dust and grime off them, I followed up with needing to turn the plates into grids of half millimeter squares onto which the image pixels would later be applied.
All the plates cut out and ready for printing. Just needed the ink aswell. Using the basic printing inks and bases I tried my best to mix together colours to be as close to the usual CMYK hues as possible including the transparency.
With the prepwork done I started printing at the printmaking workshop of Brno University of Technology.
Finishing up 10 prints totalled up to 40 press uses and all of the layers had come together to recreate the initial image quite wonderfully. Especially when seen from a distance or through the lens of a camera.
Yet from a closer inspection there were deviations which made each piece slightly unique and stand out from the rest.
Visuals for the image were needed. So I compiled a good handful of pictures I had taken over the course of a few warmer months in 2024. Then to create the initial digital image, a pixel resolution to match the size of plates would be 132x66 px.
Using an image editing software, over time a surreal landscape was created using certain details from photos like a creature or the texture of a bush. For the final touches I altered the colors and/or vividity of the distinct details to see how well it would later translate into the physical CMYK print itself.
To apply the image onto the plates I had to rasterize the image and separate it into four bitmap information layers corresponding to each of the CMYK system colour. Using a system where I would follow the image on the screen and copy it onto the grid on the plates with a permanent marker. Over time a few mistakes happened or some pixels may have been overlooked or forgotten.
There were initial issues with the transparency of magenta and black, meaning that some of the prints came out darker than the rest.
Black had another issue with ink coating, as it had the most empty space in terms of pixels. So I had to be careful applying the colour, so it would not go where it should not.
With the marking of the plates completed, all there was to do was to cut over the initial lines. All 198 of them on each plate.
And for the longest part of the whole project - picking off each of the non-marked piece of linoleum. This had also come as an opportunity to create new mistakes, such as getting overzealous with the removal of pixels.
