Folies 4.25 x 6.25 Collograph with Colored Pencil (Edition of 10)Sold
Available for sale here.
Close up to show how painterly the surface is even after drawing on top of the print.
This is a printmaking method I've wanted to try for a long time, and it's great fun. I spent most of yesterday making more of them. For this first glue collograph, I starting with a piece of matboard as a plate, and used yesterday's painting (Content) as a reference to sketch a rough outline of a face, and then loosely retraced my lines with glue. When it was almost dry, I used the tip of a brush handle to score and poke the glue for texture, and added more to create higher, printable relief areas.
After the glue was dry, I coated the matboard front & back with Liquitex Gloss Medium & Varnish and let it dry for 24 hours. I rolled oil-based inks on the plate, and pushed pigment around with brushes and finger tips. Each trip through the press revealed surprising, painterly images, with different opacities based on a variety of papers, and lots of texture from the raised areas where the glue pushed meandering rivulets of color into the paper.
The image on the left was inked generously and printed on ivory bfk rives, and the one on the right was printed as a ghost (another sheet of paper laid on the plate without re-inking) on tan bfk rives. I like them both, but for some reason, the left side image was the first to dry, so it's the first one out of the studio as a finished print (the top image in this post). I'll finish and post some of the prints I made yesterday later this week.
2 comments:
Very nice! By the way, it's spelled "collagraph" with an "a" for colla. Just check out any books on collagraphs (such as "The Complete Collagraph", "Collagraph Printmaking" and so on). Actually, my favorite is a little book from the UK - "Collagraphs and Mixed-Media Printmaking" (Brenda Hartill), as it's new and has some really cool abstract work. I was lucky enough to see some of Brenda's work ina Cambridge gallery a year or so ago; she took dried seaweed and embossed it into paper. Stunning.
I guess because colla (meaning glue) can also be spelled "collo", the term collograph keeps cropping up (even on wikipedia), but I don't like it as much (and collography reminds me too much of "colonoscopy"... ;)
Again I've been wandering through your postings, and (probably again) cannot resist remarking that you and your images are a constant delight.
I have, also, checked the two dictionaries nearest to me (a Hachette, and a Funk & Wagnalls) but they are even older than myself, and are of no help in the collo-colla- graph matter.
Probably the original form was collagraph (with coller and collage as nearest ancestors). Howsomever, languages are fluid things, and permit of dialects and differences. Just get into a conversation with someone from the Gaspe and another from Prince Edward Island, and you will need aspirin.)
Myself, and countless others, have a marked preference for collograph, and yet manage to stand proudly.
Again, thanks for your work, and for letting us see it, and for letting us in on how you do it.
Post a Comment