Last weekend, my sister and I were at the Art House in Sheffield for a printing course with Suzi Thompson. Collagraph is a technique using collage to make a plate which can then be used to make a small number of prints.
We made our plates from offcuts of mount board using masking tape, paper, string, fibres, fabric, you name it. We also added details with various tools, even drawing with a scalpel to make lines. These plates were then sealed (Suzi used a shellac based furniture polish) and left to dry before adding the ink.
The plate is covered in the thick sticky ink and then most of it is taken off with a cloth leaving the ink in the textured areas. It's then passed through a printing press with a sheet of damp watercolour paper on top. The resulting prints have such a rich, wonderful texture unique to collagraph printing.
I really love the look of this printing technique and thoroughly enjoyed our day :)
Will I do more? I don't think so... I think I would want to improve my drawing skills first or have some kind of images that would work. I would also need access to a press - although it's possible to do this by hand I'm not sure you'd get consistent results without one. And besides, within a day of doing the course I was thinking about glass again!
Information : :
Supplies from Hawthorn Printmaker Supplies
