Collagraph Results

I've been having a little play this morning.  Please bare in mind that when I did this with Sarah she is a professional and so her press is huge and heavy, her inks oil based, all the equipment you would ever want to use for this was there and also, most importantly, her expert advice was just an elbow nudge away.  I have a little table top roller press about A2 size, I was using water based inks and I was on my own!!

The photos are the wrong way around because that was the way I hung them to dry.  The first one was far too pale.  I think there were two reasons behind this; I was very cautious about the amount of ink I put on (and you do have to rub an awful lot of it off again too) and I had the rollers too far apart to make a good impression.  After cleaning the plate and inking again I applied another twist to the rollers and the print was a little better but, if anything, the paper a little too wet.

Left 2nd print  Right 1st print

The third print, again after cleaning, re inking and another little tweak on the rollers came out really rather well and I was quite pleased with parts of this one so I went for a fourth.  Now this one I re inked again and thought I would try on fabric.  It didn't work at all well  I'm not too sure if the fabric should of perhaps been damp like the paper or I should have inked more to compensate.  Anyway I wasn't going to waste the ink that was there, and it is quite hard going on the wrists and fingers all that rubbing, so I put through my last sheet of pre soaked paper. It wasn't a great print as I think the fabric had taken the oomph out of the ink.  

Left 4th Print Right 3rd Print

Lots to think about at the very least.  John did moan a little because the collagraphy plate now looks nothing like it did yesterday and he quite liked how it was all button polished, but there you go!  This shell is my favorite part of all of them.

I now have some background papers to play with but the whole process is quite intense!

And if you would like to see how good you can become, with years and years of practise and all the right gear, Sarah's web page is http://rossthompsonprints.com/home and now she has moved to a most fabulous house on Lochgoilhead there will no doubt be some great new work coming along.


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