Two more royal collographs

Two more collographs from my British Royals series, others of which can be seen  here and here. The one in the green dress is Mary Queen of Scots. She was pretty scary looking when I did the first proof. However, I then added some Matt Gel Medium to her face, with a little Burnt Sienna added. That meant that I could see her features & what they were likely to print. Previously I’d just used Gel or Impasto, which was a bit silly of me. Mary’s face, hair and hands were inked up in Raw Sienna, then  the dress in green and the chair and underskirt in blue.  I did a yellow colour roll and then a blend, of which I had the reddish- brown at the top. I then wiped back her face and hands.

Ann of Cleves was printed on a different day, with different colours on the rollers, but still a yellow for the first roll, then a blend with pinkish-red at the bottom. She has been inked up initially in Prussian Blue and Sanguine. ‘In the flesh’ the sanguine looks marvellous.

Printmaking is over for the year now. What a shame. I will miss it.

Mary and Henry – collographs

Last Sunday we had another Printfest day, with teacher Seraphina Martin, viscosity printing collographs. Here are two from my new series of Royals. These two are the ones I’m most pleased with.

Making the collograph plate of Queen Mary was the most interesting. I used Impasto Medium to paint her face, and as I was doing it, it became obvious to me that Queen Mary’s bone structure is so like Princess Anne’s.

I can remember the day Queen Mary died. I was in the ‘office’ of my father’s furniture shop, and he explained to me that the reason that there was only dirges on the radio was because the old Queen had died. How times change!

But the other interesting thing about that is that my fathers ‘office’ was also used for furniture finishing, and it smelt of wood shavings and shellac. Now I am using shellac to seal my collograph plates – we’ve gone full circle.

Henry looks evil, doesn’t he? I’ve got another one where he has a green birthmark- it’s worse. I found by trial and error that the portrait ones work best if the faces are wiped back after the colour rolls.  I didn’t do quite so many prints last week, as I inked up the portrait ones a la poupee (see glossary) instead of inking up the whole plate with the same colour.  So I DO have more to show you, but no time to scan them at the moment. It’s been a busy week.

Fortunately Seraphina has extended the Printfest (yippee, yippee) and will be having another day late in September. I’ll try to finish my plate of Queen Victoria for that one. She’s wearing the same tiara as Mary.

Royal collographs – and the plates.

This print is a new one made from an old collograph plate that I made when I was at the Sydney Gallery school, maybe 5 years ago. This image was mostly made using impasto, on a base of mat board. A paper serviette was cut for the ruff collar, a piece of textured paper and a sticker for the headdress, and some minute sequin-type objects to decorate the dress. The hair and the fan are also textured papers.

You can see better on the collograph plate. This is the reverse image on mat board that one inks up and puts through the printer with the paper.

I’m now  doing a series of royals, but the only print I’m satisfied with so far is the new one of Elizabeth at her coronation.  This one also uses impasto, but a lot of stickers. Those gold ones that you have to pick off the backing paper- the ones that sometimes say ‘happy birthday’. I think you can probably see them quite clearly on the plate. The snood is fine Japanese paper with a grid texture, and the dress is fine paper that has a silver and white swirly print. (You can see that effect best on the bodice.)

I’ll be reprinting some of my other new ones (Queen Mary, Henry VIII, Catharine of Aragon) next weekend.

Finally ….more collographs

It’s over a week ago that I did another Sunday printing collographs with Seraphina Martin. Another terrific day. I had NINE new plates to print. Some of them are from my ’ships and  shipwrecks’ theme, and others are my new theme ‘queens & kings’. There are such beautiful textured papers about, and not all of them are organic in style, so they’re not all suitable for the ships. I have the Gloriana plate that I love, so I decided to do another series in that dIrection. I  printed all nine new plates. Some are better than others. Portraiture, of course, is not easy. Some of the ones I printed are definitely only ‘proofs’. I will have to ink them up ‘a la poupee’ to get a better result. (See glossary).

I wonder what other people think about ‘tinkering’ with prints, when they’re not wholly successful. If you’re at art school, being assessed on your printmaking skills – well, then its unthinkable.   But how about now – when I’m only doing printmaking for pleasure. The paper is expensive (I use B F K Rives) and the prints are perfectly all right give or take a bit of coloured pencil.

Anyway, these prints have not been tinkered with. They’re how they came off the press. I’ll have to post the ‘royals’ next time.

No time to do it now.

More cool collographs

I thought you might like to see some more of the collographs I printed last weekend. The first two were done with impasto medium. The first one represents sea urchins on the sea floor and the second a tubular sponge – this one is a bit bright for my taste, but with collographs, you never quite know till they come off the press.

I have got some more images now and started to make some more collograph plates to print at the end of July when I have another Sunday with Seraphina.

As well as my ship ones, I’m going to do a series of Queens (we’re talking people here, not ships). I have a collograph of Queen Elizabeth the First – that was the old collograph I was making more prints from.There are such wonderful decorative papers that I want to use, and many of them are not suitable for the ’shipwrecks and the undersea’ theme. So I’m going to make more Tudor ladies – wives of Henry VIII and so forth.

The image I mentioned in my previous post – that was on the Sydney Gallery School website…… that one is an etching – not a collograph. It’s subject is “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.  Mine was called “Botanical”, because I did it with botanicals – a bunch of camomile held by an angel, deadly nightshade held by a skelton, and tobacco plant together with a smoker. Here is a direct link to it.  My other old collographs that were done at the Sydney Gallery School, also under Seraphina’s tuition, can be found here.

This sinking ship is another one printed for the first time last Sunday. Any New Zealander will know which ship this is – the Wahine, which went down in Wellington Harbour 40 years ago. I was in Wellington that day. In fact I had sailed on the Wahine a number of times, & my boyfriend around that time was an engineer for the Union Steamship Company. I knew one of the people who died, and New Zealand being the small place it is, I knew a few other passengers as well. Both the Wahine plate and the next one, of a wreck on the beach, use textured papers as well as impasto medium.

So now you’ve seen all the new collographs, and you have a link to my old ones. Next, I’ll be posting some drawings again. I beat myself up for not drawing much – but you can’t make collographs and draw simultaneously, more’ the pity.

If you’re still not clear what a collograph is, click on my GLOSSARY at the top of the page.

Colourful Collographs

Oh, I love viscosity printing. It takes a long time to set up, but once you’re set up, you can print off quite a number of collographs in not toooo much time. Yesterday I did a full day viscosity printing with Seraphina Martin. Such fun! Seraphina is a great teacher and always calm, which is just what you need in a print-making teacher. This was the first Sunday of three winter Sundays, once a month. I learnt collographs from Seraphina at the Sydney Gallery School (Meadowbank Campus), and it’s good to be back doing them again.  If you go to the Gallery School website & click on “Printmaking 1″ the illustration on that page is one of the etchings I did while I was there. 

I did eleven prints yesterday. I had seven new collograph plates, all on a sea/shipwreck theme, and one old plate that I still like and want more prints from. The ship theme prints are ‘bleed printed’. That means that the paper I’m printing onto is placed withing the edges of the plate, while I print it, so that the print goes right to the very edge of the paper. In this case, I have left a border left on the left-hand side, because I plan to bind these prints into a book in japanese stab-bound style, and that blank area will be hidden in the binding.

These plates were made on mat board, with texture from impasto medium, and some textured paper. The lines of the ships’ rigging were made by gouging with a stylus.

This image of kelp is just painted on with impasto medium. It is very strange how, even in the medium of collographs, my prints look very much like my prints, when arrayed out to dry with the work of others. 

Note, see my GLOSSARY page for information on any terms I’ve used that are new to you.