Well first of all I've mastered the directions for the drive, I got there an hour early so I mooched in a cafe eating cake and drinking tea.
Collagraph
At the workshop though, we started with collagraph prints. For this we spread tile grout on a piece of card and created a texture in it by pressing various things on it such as bubble wrap, lace, string etc. When it dried we inked it up and ran it through the press.
I wasn't blown away by this method to be honest. A lot of the time the textures and patterns don't come through too well. And believe it or not I actually forgot to take any photos of them! D'oh!
Hard Ground Etching
I really enjoyed doing etching but it's so easy to make a mistake. We were etching onto a zinc plate that had been coated in a waxy 'ground'. When you etch into it you reveal the metal beneath. It's then submerged in a bath of copper sulphate which 'bites' into the plate in order to create incised lines.
We then inked the plate and pressed it.
You can't see the metal plate too well in this photo above because of how shiny it is but here's my plate with a bit of a leafy design on and the first print I produced from it. Nice and delicate I think.
Something we did in addition to these plates was a technique called chine colle. This was really cool. We found snippets from newspapers and tissue paper and cut them out. Then we glued one side and put them onto our plates glue side up.
The paper we want to print onto is then placed on top of this and because the rollers on the printing press roll over with so much pressure, the tissue paper is not only glued onto the paper but is pressed into it so it becomes almost one with it. It's very clever and looks really good.
This was my attempt at it below (I re-inked it with turquoise this time rather than green.)
I also managed to grab a few minutes to look around the gallery upstairs and wow there were so many lovely prints! Just take a look at this one by Lisa Stubbs!
Here are some of the other gorgeously printed bits and bobs that were there
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| Memo Illustration |
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| Some by Dee Beale |
Can't wait to do screen printing next week!!
oxoxo
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