It's all Japanese to me...

Easter this year means Lindt chocolate bunnies (with the cute bell) and gocco printing! I finally opened my predictably neat little package from Japan to find an assort of supplies... Now, as I haven't actually used a gocco before, I had to do some research... (clearly all instructions being in Japanese was going to be of absolutely no help.) After a combination of Google and You tube I made my first print.

As it was all a bit of an experiment I wasn't too precious about the final product.



Gocco supplies: ink, cleaner, print lamps & screens.



My original drawing which I scanned and then printed on a laser printer. To expose a screen your artwork needs to be carbon based. Hence, photocopies and lasers prints work really well.



Gocco with inked screen in place and final print on the foam pad below.





I did a couple of experiments printing on to thick brown card and also red paper. In traditional offset printing white ink is never used so I was pretty excited about printing onto some different paper stocks.

The awesome thing about the gocco is that once it is all inked up and ready to go, you can do about 50 prints in a row without losing quality and without having to add ink! I really need to get one of those nifty print holders to stack my prints when they are wet – for the moment my toast holder will have do.

For anyone interested in all the details of the gocco printing process from exposing screens to printing, below it a funny little film put together by the team at etsy as a demonstration.