BACK TO WORK

After a lovely summer break in Amsterdam and St Ives, I started back at the yard:ARTspace this weekend kicking off the Autumn term with a weekend workshop, Collagraph with a Dry Point Twist.

It felt very Autumny with spiders webs bejewelled and a very mist couple of mornings.

The yard was set up

to greet everyone, new work hung up.

Sunflowers to remind us of summer??

And a display of collagraph samples made into booklets.

Party rings and custard creams set the scene for what was to come this weekend!

Everyone was soon head down and working

on dry point images on 'file cover plastic'.

Here is an example of where we were all heading, a drypoint plate on plastic with a collagraph background made from card and glue.

Printed together they give a rich drawn print that looks a great deal like a two plate etching.

Here is the drawing together with the plastic dry point on the right and the glued and shellacked collagraph on the left.

With 2 plates on the go there was lots of inking

and the small presses were ideal for the job.

The dry points printed first produced energetically drawn images,

masking tape added tonal areas

creating solid areas of colour.

but the magic happened when the dry point plates were  

printed on a collagraph background,

wood glue produces very interesting textures and

printing with 2 plates keeps colours defined

and allows the printing of lighter colours without contaminating them.

Lots of gorgeous prints were made, the atmosphere was energetic and the weekend whizzed by, most of the party rings were eaten!!

For details of more classes being held at the yard:ARTspace check out the website.