The next East London Printmakers exhibition is at Forman’s Smokehouse Gallery in Hackney Wick (details here). I decided to try out smoking my prints (in the “smokehouse” rather than the “cigarette” sense…). Here are some photos of the process.

I used wood I cut from the plate to create the smoke:

I used our Cobb BBQ to generate the heat:

A tarpaulin keeps the smoke in, along with the plate from the print for the previous ELP exhibition:

Smoke:

So, was it worth the effort? The ink did darken a bit, and the prints certainly have a nice aroma, but next time I’d experiment with different paper and possibly with dampening the paper in advance of smoking to try to hold onto more of the smoke. But check out the exhibition to see for yourself!