As gory as it might sound, blood printing is actually a thing. There have been artworks known to men that use blood as a painting medium. In this case, blood is directly pumped out of the person’s body and used as a printing ink to print on canvas. Sound’s iffy, doesn’t it?
Ted Lawson, an artist that resides in Brooklyn did his first blood printing using a CNC (computer numerical control) machine to directly dispense blood into a rush controlled by the CNC robotic arm. As blood is not an easy medium to manoeuvre on paper, as it starts to create a pool on the paper, Dawson had to use a vacuum to completely suck up the paper to be completely flat. This made the blood evenly spread and not pool in a single area.
Despite being squeamish to needles and blood, he said that it became better overtime after doing it multiple times. He had said that “When you focus on something other than yourself, like making a drawing, it becomes ink and stops being blood.”
Photo credit: Ted Lawson
Editor: Su Su Rati
