Carborundum and collagraphs

 I have been at Mary Gillett's collagraph workshop over the weekend. I was so busy over the 2 days that I completely forgot to take any photographs of progress - very remiss of me! So I've had a day in my own studio making some more tester plates and pressing the prints that I did on the workshop and taking a few photos of the process.

Although I made lots of collagraphs during my MA I always used plant material and polyfilla so I've been keen to try other methods of making the plates. I used carborundum and tile cement on these small experimental plates - I found it quite difficult to get the effect I wanted. There are so many different ways to use carborundum so I made the plate below last night as a guide for future plates. The next stage will be to use the new methods along with the plant material. 

Carborundum tester plate 

Mountboard base with first stage of tile cement 

Plywood base with tile cement and second stage of carborundum 

Various small experimental plates 

Print using 6-8 layers of PVA over solid carborundum

I also made an aluminum plate covered with parcel tape, drafting tape and sellotape and then burnt with a blowtorch - this is great fun and totally beyond any control as the plastic under heat just does it's own thing. I printed it in black and then adding 2 colours and using the viscosity relief printing method 

Print from aluminum plate 

Adding relief colour 

Printed in black intaglio and 2 colour viscosity relief 

Now I need to do some more printing which I can't do at home as I don't have a press unfortunately. 

Linocut workshop

I am keen to try different printing processes so I enrolled for a reduction lino workshop last weekend with Mary Gillett. I am also doing a weekly etching course with Mary and enjoy working in her large studio out in the country near Tavistock in Devon. There was only 3 of us so we got lots of individual attention and a printing press each! The weather was glorious and we were able to keep our lino very warm and supple under the sun as well as enjoy lunch outside!!

The lino reduction method was invented by Picasso, who had a great love of printmaking apparently. This method of lino cutting involves progressively cutting the same linoblock for each new colour, making it impossible to take any further prints from the original plates, and there’s not much left of them anyway!

Mary suggested we made 10 prints– that number would allow for mistakes and hopefully we would get a few good ones - so it is quite time consuming, printing each colour 10 times.  The registration for printing is really important and we spent a lot of time getting it right so that each print would line up exactly on the press – even so I managed to get some of mine slightly out which of course shifts everything – sometimes this works sometimes it doesn’t – such is the excitement of printing – you never know what you are going to get!!

I worked from a coloured drawing prepared earlier (yes of course I watched Blue Peter!) I wanted to capture the gorse on the moor near my house and took my sketchbook on my walks last week – this was the drawing that I worked from

I then made a tracing of the drawing, reversed it and traced it through carbon paper onto the lino. I was then ready to make the first  cuts and remove  the areas that I wanted white. The vivid yellow of the gorse was the most important colour to keep pure so that was the first colour I printed 

I then cut away the areas I wanted yellow. It was quite strange at first cutting away the area of the wanted colour, a reversal of the usual practice of taking away what you don’t want! The next colour was blue – I loved rolling out the colours on to plate glass before applying it to the linocut.

this is the stage when you know whether the registration is correct. I had forgotten one of the instructions, to always run the print through the press in the same direction and as a result some of my prints were a fraction out! All good learning - but it pays to listen!!

It is usual practice to work from light to dark but other considerations are important as you are overlaying colours on top of each other and they are still wet unless you take a week and do one colour a day!

I then cut away the blue area, the sky,

and printed in a light grey/brown – I had now  printed 30 times and was half way through the second day – I realised I was not going to finish in a weekend !

So at the end of the weekend I was nearly there but still have a couple more colours to apply– another brown and finally black – unless I change my mind and choose other colours after living with them for a couple of weeks – I can’t get back to the studio again until 9 June to complete the prints – I’ll post the finished  result then but meantime this is as far as I got…….. x 10!

From TREES to ROCKS!

I’m just back from Wilson’s Prom

and a Night photography and Light painting workshop with Lloyd Godman of Baldessin Press – we camped for 4 days and I must say I was very glad to get back to a comfy bed last night! No wombats searching for a morsel or other delightful species of Australian wildlife wanting to share my tent!

I have had fun with my camera and here are a few of the images that I picked for the show and tell at the end of the workshop! (You can click on the image to see a larger version)

All the photography took place at sunrise (yes we had to get up at 5.30am!) or at dusk - it was the full moon and we went off down to Squeaky Beach see above 2nd image (yes the sand squeaks underfoot hence the original name!) to do the light painting – it was very experimental and I only came out with a couple of worthwhile images but I loved the process and will definitely be out there (wherever I am) at night with my torch and camera! (keeping the mossies company and providing them with food!!!!). It does help if it's full moon as you can see what you're doing!!

If you want to try this it is pretty simple but you need a tripod and a camera that lets you set the exposure to at least 15secs and preferably much longer – my camera lets me go to 30 secs and I managed to get some interesting results – you then set the self timer pick up your torch and run around in front of the camera making a drawing with your torch –

As I said it’s all very experimental and you never know what kind of result you’ll get – here someone was running along the side of the river with a torch

you can also use a torch and coloured gels to paint areas of the scene in front of you as in this one – as you can see I’ve got a lot of practising to do!

the last ingredient is a beautiful place because if all fails it is just wonderful to be out in the wild!

if anything about this process doesn’t make sense then please ask me anything you want to know and if you are in Australia then I highly recommend Lloyd’s workshop - go HERE for info

Tomorrow I’m looking forward to meeting up with Jo from Mystory – we are going to visit the TarraWarra Museum of Art together

Artist workshops and retreat

My good friend and artist Marged Pendrell is leading 4 different residential workshops this year, in a fantastic place on Anglesey in Wales. Marged and Helen are beautiful people and they come highly recommended - do have a look at their new website here! Please pass on this link and information if you know anyone who might be interested - Oh and please let them know that you saw the information on my blog if you or a friend book a place. The groups are small and will book up quickly!