Sew 'n' Chat: Collagraph printing fun

I went to a Collagraph Workshop at Cuckoo Farm Studios last Saturday. The class was taken by Maxine Fitter, a very talented illustrator. It was just me and a friend, Norah Stocker who I met at my quilting class in Lawford. Norah hadn’t done any collagraph prints before but I have done a couple of two-day workshops with Kim Major George at Art Van Go over the past two years.

Plate made with foil, card and wallpaper and printed once

Collagraphs, for those who don’t know, are relief printing plates made by gluing various media e.g. card, paper, tissue, glue, string, foil, seeds etc. on to a mount board base which can be further embellished by cutting into the mount board surface, scratching it or indenting the surface – basically, a textural collage. The whole plate is then varnished with shellac or button varnish to seal the various porous surfaces. The plate is then inked up, using cloths, brushes and rollers to apply the ink which can then be rubbed in and polished away to create the various colour and shade variations. The plate is then normally printed on damp paper using a roller press. Plates are often really nice art objects in their own right and, as they probably won’t survive more than half a dozen printings, they form an important result of collagraph printing.

I have previously worked with plaster, masking tape and string as well as tissue paper and seeds; some of which takes several days to dry before printing is possible. So, with just a five hour workshop, I worked with very simple media this time, cutting into the mount board surface and gluing some of the paper removed back on in different places with shapes of thin card and a little frayed hessian. I also tried a crushed foil bun tin and some textured wallpaper. I am really pleased with the results; I hope you like them.