Sunday 29 October 2017

Two Steps Forward & One Back!

Flush with the success of the last printing session, I went ahead and made 2 larger but somewhat similar collograph plates. Here they are glued, sealed and painted with gesso ready to go.
 
 The faint colour showing through is the colour of the original mount board scraps that I had to hand. Once again I have used pressed grasses and the mulberry bark pieces.
 First print is very disappointing, too dark and the grasses are very indistinct. What a waste of good sized printing paper!
 This one is a little better, but still not up to much. I decided to reprint one of the successes of the last session just to see if it was the plate at fault or the different paper that I was using.
Hmmm, this is actually better than the previous print, so it's definitely not the paper. It must be that the plate is at fault. It may be that the grasses are too thick and the mulberry bark too thin so that it doesn't create the obvious vine like marks of the print above. I won't abandon the poor prints completely, with the cost of the paper to consider, so I might try a soft water colour on the paler ones. It looks as if I need to make some more plates and really concentrate on the elements not being too thick. Back to the drawing, well collograph board.

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