Sticking and Glueing

Recent Collagraph print 

I’ve been trying to learn how to create Collagraph prints in recent weeks, with varying degrees of success. It’s  a printmaking technique I want to confidently deliver in the classroom with my students at college, but I also thought it might be a good technique to explore some of my drawings of the WW2 lookout ruins on the beach in Filey and other images I’ve not managed to bring to life in painting.

Basically, it’s a printmaking technique where different textured surfaces are glued and sealed to a mountboard plate of some sort to create a relief, but this is then printed in the Intaglio method of inking up the surface and printing onto dampened paper. At least, that is the method I prefer the results of, as it can also be inked up as a relief print would, which is how I have often seen it taught, but I don’t think the results are half as nice.

Anyway, here above is an example of my first attempt at one, with the plate, with an image based on said drawings, which was not that successful as yet, but ok. This is mainly due to aspects of my plate where I have used textures which have made certain areas too dark and heavily textured, which have then been difficult to ink up, or rather wipe back. 

Recent Collagraph print

This other, newer smaller print above however, based on some buildings in Selkirk, Scotland has been more successful, as I’ve not overdone the textures bit and tried to be a bit more subtle. I’m going to incise some etched lines back into the plate to add some greater definition to the areas at the lower half of the plate.

Getting there….these could be a nice thing to develop further. I love the experimentation of it all.