Collagraph prints - taking it further

Remember the collagraphs prints I did back here and here?

I ended up with some prints that were pretty ordinary, as one often does. So I decided to use them as experiments for a technique I've wanted to try for a while.

I started with a leaf print:

Yes, it really is a leaf print, though it's pretty unexciting and you'd be hard pressed to say what was there!

I drew on the print with green beeswax crayon and a wax candle. They are resists , of course, so the areas covered by the wax were protected. Those areas were ones I wanted to stay light. I also expected the areas with the printing ink on them would probably resist taking colour, and that was partly true.

Then I put a wash of blue dye over the surface, using the dyes like ink. Then, when it had dried, I repeated the wax treatment and put a wash of yellow dye over the top. Here's the result...

I really like this! The resists weren't complete, of course, so there is some colour bleed but generally the waxed areas didn't take much colour, as long as I wasn't too heavy-handed with the dye.

I did the same with another very ordinary leaf print.

On this one, I added black beeswax crayon for shadows and drew with the wax candle. Then I gave it a pale turquoise dye wash.

Again, when it was dry, I drew more with the wax candle and added a yellow dye wash.

It looks quite pale here but it worked very well.

The third one was one of the prints from the impression plate. A lot of these prints weren't that exciting but some of them had interesting misty effects that I wanted to exploit.

I added shadows with a dark purple beeswax crayon and covered a lot of the white areas with scribbled candlewax to protect the light areas. Then I gave it a wash with the same pale turquoise as the previous one. The resist effect of the original printing inks was more an issue this time, so the shading gave the original blue some depth.

 

Then I protected some of the blue areas with the candlewax and added a yellow wash.



Don't you love the magic of colour printing?

And yet more trees...

Remember when I did some spray printing with stencils and some screen printing with thickened dye back in April? Like most printing sessions, it generated a lot of prints (not all of which were entirely wonderful).  But often prints are a starting place for something else.

In my journal, I mounted the paper resists I'd used, which had quite a bit of pattern on then because of the resist already on the screen.

 

I also took one of the prints, that looked like this...

... and worked on it with Inktense pencils until I thought I could do no more.

 

It's still a funny looking tree but it's better!  

 

A few postcards

It just occurred to me that I haven't written here for, literally, years about the fabric postcards I've been making! I am so used to making them that I just don't think to talk about them here. Of course, they appear on the Fibrecircle blog each time. Mostly, anyway!


This rather weird one included some stamped cloth that I made years ago as a sample for another piece of work, inspired by the standing stones at Filitosa in Corsica. I combined it with frayed  cotton fabric on a painted background.

 

This one was based on a painted background with added colour and stitch.

 

 

This one was made with one of the prints from a playday with Claire early this year. We used compressed sponge to create simple shapes to print from. I added colour to one of my prints with Inktense pencils and embellished it with stitch. It's still a pretty weird looking tree..

 

 

I like to use the postcards to try out stuff and make something different from whatever I'm working on at the time.  So they generally end up different each time.

Making print plates 5

Yes, they do come to an end, I promise! But it was a very productive day...

This was a different kind of plate again. I took craft foam and stitched a chain stitch with embroidery thread. When I was designing it, I was thinking of the ongoing Fibrecircle journal work on Trees.

 

I only took two prints from it so far, but I think this has a lot of possibilities. I printed with a spoon and fingers, hence the obvious finger prints. This was an issue because the plate wasn't mounted and ended to want to move during printing. You can really see this in the second print. I think I need to mount the plate before trying again.

 

I began a second similar plate, but my aim with this one is to create layers of colour, adding more stitch each time, in a sort of reversal of the reduction printing process. I won't start the process until it's mounted.

So yes, somewhere down the track... My priority at present is to finish my main work for the untethered exhibition out of hand in November, so serious printing time has been eaten up by stitching time. It's quite contemplative... but not yet anything I can show.

Making print plates 4

The fourth plate I made was a fairly basic kind of collagraphs, the kind we probably all made as students! I used cardboard, cork sheet and self-adhesive foam letters to make a marine ply plate covered in letters. I wanted to see whether the different surfaces printed in interesting ways. Like many other textile artists, I like including text and lettering in my work, so this plate was made with a specific context in mind.

I did three test prints with Permaset inks on cartridge paper. Although the plate was sealed, the sealing clearly wasn't adequate, so the plate, especially the cardboard, gradually disintegrated. The foam letters were also ink-greedy, as you'd expect.

 

I actually don't mind the final plate, which I'll seal again for future printing. I like the way there are gaps and partial letters. I may make more partial letters with cork sheet, as I like the speckly texture it gives.

 

This is one you'll definitely see again!

Making print plates 3

At our playday last month, we were trying out a new medium from Derivan Matisse called Medium 37. This is a high gloss self levelling pouring medium about the consistency of pouring cream. After watching a few videos, I thought we might try using it to create a low-relief print plate by trickling it over the surface of marine ply and allowing it to dry in interesting shapes.

Wet medium

Dry plate

As you can see, it was really a bit too runny for that purpose, though it didn't spread out to cover the whole board.

My only print so far was with acrylic paint. I thought the tackiness of it might work with this fairly slippery surface.

 

 

 

 

I did get some interesting marks, which make me feel the plate has promise for general patterning on paper. But it was a dry day and, even with retarder added, the acrylics were a bit quick to dry. I was being lazy, not getting out the printing inks, and it shows.

I have some ideas for using this plate, so I expect you'll see it again! 

Making print plates 2

My second and third plates were made without the press, using the same principle. I used foam meat tray instead of foam core, as it's softer, and impressed a leaf into it with the marble rolling pin. It's not a deep impression, as the leaves were fragile and softer than most of the materials I used on the foam core plate.

 

I printed it with my baren and black Permaset printing inks. Of the four prints, two were pretty ordinary - you may see them later as I do different things with them. But there were two that I liked. The left one was inked and then wiped back heavily; the right one was just a straight print.





I really like these and they're going into my Fibrecircle Trees book.