Gocco At Last (Part 1)

Yesterday was Gocco Day! I've been waiting for a free afternoon to try out my new Gocco (a small screenprinting device from Japan that I bought a few weeks ago), and yesterday was the day. Here it is:


First of all I needed to choose an image to print. I have heaps of ideas but wasn't really sure where to start. After much deliberation I decided to print a small image of a Japanese temple/pagoda and write 'Ni Hao', or 'Hello' in Chinese next to it. The gocco works by exposing the carbon on your image onto a screen, so I wandered down to a local shop where I paid the grand total of 14p to photocopy my images! This bit was cheap, just as well as the rest of the process uses screens and bulbs that are quite hard to come by in the UK and cost quite a bit.

So, here's the image I chose, it's sitting on the grey pad on the bottom of the gocco:


The next part is to put a screen and a blue filter into the top part of the machine, press it down and check that the image can be seen, like this:



Next is the exciting bit - exposing the screen. You have to use two single-use bulbs (like the old camera flash bulbs), that are screwed into a flash unit that sits on top of the blue filter you see above.

I'm gutted I didn't get a picture of the flashing part, but it's quite dramatic, a big flash filled the room and there was the unmistakable smell of burning...

Next I peeled back the cellophane on the screen and applied the special gocco ink to the screen. I choose silver for the temple, red for the sun and black for the writing.

The next part was the printing... I was kind of nervous at this point!