Plaster block printing

Following on from the tile printing work I decided to continue printing but use a different material to print on. I decided to use plaster as this material I have used before, I started off by creating a wooden square block as a template for the plaster when I would pour it in. Then when the plaster was made I decided to soft soap the table as I didn't want the plaster sticking to it and then poured the plaster in the wooden square. I had seconds before it would start to harden so I smoothed it out as vaguely as I could then used the carved out tiles I had printed with previously to press into the plaster whilst it was slightly runny still. This created an outline of parts of a female human figure with in the plaster. At first I didn't think it would of worked because I thought the plaster would not get all the detail from the bodies, but it did. 

Secondly after the plaster had dried slightly I decided to keep with my theory for this project which is colour and add some brightness to the piece. I included ink as I haven't used the material in a while and I feel it would be different to just using acrylic paint all the time. I squirted the ink at the top of each human outline and it naturally ran down and around the figure and through the cracks. I feel this made the piece quite sinister and abstract as I didn't control how this would look in the final outcome. I chose these colours as I felt yellow would be too bright and these colours are very bold and give off a strong impact to the audience.

After letting it all dry fully over a period of a few days, I noticed something had happened to the plaster work. It was as if there was still a lot of wet plaster inside and the water had mixed with the ink and faded it. Im unsure if I like this result as even though I didn't plan on it happening I feel it has made the red area look much different to the others. However the black has got much darker and the orange has changed to pink, so see this change without knowing it was quite exciting.