A CLASS ACT

The Autumn term started yesterday at Hampen Factory.

The sun shone lighting up the reds and oranges that herald the start of the season.

Set in the Cotswold countryside Hampen Factory is a fantastic place to hold a creative course.

I have been blogging about Hampen since 2009 and have run printmaking and sketchbook courses from there for several years more. So I though it was about time I showed you what we get up to.

This term my morning group will be experimenting with the sophisticated collagraph process, silk aqua tint. Week 1 introduces the group to this method, with biscuits to keep the creative flow sustained.

Silk aqua tint is a collagraph plate making method using chiffon attached to a card substrate as the base plate. The plate for this example is on the right.

This collagraph plate produces an image that would be mistaken for a mezzotint or an etching using tradition aqua tint resin, the latter being a toxic plate making method. When printed you get what you see on the plate ( plate on the left)

By painting on to the chiffon and card plate acrylic mediums, wood glue and even emulsion a set of tonal ranges can be achieved.

Everyone spent a happy 2 hours experimenting on sample plates with different liquids and of course writing on the back of the plates what was used where...!

Next Wednesday when these samples are dry we will print them and see what we get.

 

The pitfalls with this process is putting enough glue on ( you need several thin layers allowing them to dry in-between) to achieve white. Acrylic paint (the yellow) makes a mark, but will not produce light tones, good for gentle shadows, a bit counter intuitive. Trying out different acrylic gels and mediums found on the shelves of art shops is worth a go.

 

Over the next few weeks you will see this technique develop, I think silk aqua tint is one of the most exciting of processes as it gives such unexpected results and the print has a very different quality to a traditional collagraph....if there is such a thing?

 

For more information about Hampen Factory, http://www.hampenfactory.co.uk/ or contact me for details about 2013/14 weekend workshops and the 10 week printmaking course, 2014.