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Day 3 of a three day collagraph course at Leicester Print Workshop

Above are my sealed collagraph pieces before inking, and then what they liked like after inking but before printing. Inking up a number of pieces that will work together in one print is quite a challenge. When making and inking them its easy to get caught up with each one as an individual piece instead of retaining the sense of the single print. There were so many ways that these could have been inked up that I didn’t end up using some of the ways that Charles had demonstrated yesterday. There are areas and pieces in the print to the right that I can learn from in future prints. The advantage of being at Leicester Print Workshop was that there’s lots of room to have a range of colours out and lots of rollers, unlike at home. But that does result in too much choice! Some of the other participants prints of pieces were absolutely fantastic.

Charles also demonstrated how to work with two plates, one dark and one a colour. He showed us how to print the main plate in black onto a piece of newsprint. Then take a fresh piece of environmount, place the newsprint onto the plate print down and roll through the press again. The image is reversed back and if you seal you can then work onto it knowing where to cut away more precisely to give the colour of the ink and the colour of the page. Charles also suggested that we keep a record of how the colours we’re using are made in case we need to make them again later in the edition. Its been great to hear all so much practical advice from a very experienced printmaker.

During the day I also carried with the elephants plate that I had begun yesterday. Now I understand the process a bit better there are things I could have done better with this plate. I needed to think about how to make the elephants stand out against the background  by making them darker or lighter or more patterned or more textured in contrast to the background. Above is the plate after inking. Adding colour might also have helped, but time was running out.To the right is the plate after printing by surface rolling only. There are errors on this print primarily using the roller rather poorly resulting in lines in the moon and across the right hand elephant. I’m not very experienced with using a roller and the plate was wider than the roller so both these contributed to the lines.

Overall the three days were a great learning experience, giving me practical ideas and inspirations to help me renew and develop my printmaking.

During today I had a few minutes to capture a view that had caught my eye over the last few days, looking through the front window out into the street, seeing the title of the building reversed on the front window.