Collagraph Printmaking



Susanne Clark - Soaring Into The Blue
©2011 Susanne Clark
Collagraph Print on Paper -  8 x 8 in -  $75.00


Last Friday night I gave a talk to an art society group about my art and printmaking.  In the first half I talked about my painting process and showed some photographs.  I set up the pictures in Power Point and connected to their projector.  The color was a complete disaster which was a pity.  It appears that they find it hard to get the color right when using the projector so in the future if I am asked to do this again for a smallish group, I will take my own monitor and use that, then I know that the colors will show correctly. 

The second part of the presentation was about printmaking.  I mainly make collagraph prints, a form of printmaking, which as the name suggests, comes from collage.  I took a variety of my prints and also some examples of the collagraph plates that I make to print the images from.   As usual everyone fell in love with the actual plates.  I think it is the texture and depth of the plates after they have been printed that is so appealing.  Because printmaking, and especially collagraph, is less familiar to many artists I think it was probably the most interesting part of the talk. 

To brighten up this post I have added a photo of a small collagraph that I experimented with last week.  I wanted to try using printing ink in a very transparent way.  It's part of a larger plate that I wasn't happy with so I cropped the image down.  It ended up being very simple but I think it has a very optimistic feel.  Does it  feel that way to you?

Collagraph Artists Proofs

I have just pulled another collagraph print of 'Breathe'. This one is a much brighter version. I now have four options to submit to the 'Trees in Art' National Exhibition here in Atlanta and I have to decide which one to go with. I would have liked to do a painting to enter but somehow this print just asked to be done. I only hope that the judges actually realise what I am trying to say and don't just think it is an odd looking little tree. Here are the last two variations.

The Green Version

After printing up two or three versions of my 'lung tree' in blues I decided to do a green version which is probably more in keeping with the ecological idea. I think my name for this piece will be 'Breathe'.

Which one do you like best?

Trees - Lungs of the Earth

I have just spent the morning printmaking. There is an upcoming exhibition with the theme "Trees" and although I don't usually do trees I thought it would be fun to have something to submit. I also wanted to create a piece with a slight ecological twist and because trees breathe I decided to combine lungs and a tree shape and put it into a landscape. Here is the result so far. Below the image you will find the process described.



The picture doesn't show up all the colours that well however after proofing it twice I am now reasonably happy with it. Here is the process I used for making a collagraph print.

After drawing out the design on mat board I cut into the trunk and branch areas where I wanted the shapes to be raised. Remember that in the printing process everything is in reverse. Anything cut deep into the printing plate becomes raised after printing and the raised areas of the plate become deep, plus the image is reversed. I then built up the landforms and added carborundum where I wanted the very dark area. Once the plate was finished and had been covered with shellac to seal it I was ready to ink it up. The first colour was deep blue which went over the whole plate filling all the cracks and branches. After wiping off most of the blue ink then I rolled over the whole plate with a transparent green and then followed up with another roll of light creamy orange. This last colour I will make stronger next time I print it to bring out the definition more and to warm the whole thing up.

I need a good name for this work. Any ideas ?

Just as an afterthought, I have trouble deciding how to spell things in these posts. Should I use the English spelling of words or the American way now that I am living in the US. Somehow I just couldn't bring myself to write colour as color today. Perhaps another time.

Collagraph Landscape called "Mystery Mountain"

Yesterday I spent in the studio here in Atlanta making a new plate for a collagraph. It was really nice to have the door to my studio/garage open and the sun shining in.while I worked.

In case you don't know anything about printmaking, a plate is what you print the image from, and for a collagraph, it is usually a thin piece of board, metal or cardboard that you have collaged or stuck various pieces of paper or other stuff on. You can see some examples at my web site.

I spent a long time working on it and was quite pleased at the end of the day, however, when I sat down and reviewed what I had done later that evening, it didn't look good at all! It's so frustrating. I won't give up on it though as there are some really nice parts. I was trying to have some large clear areas instead of all over pattern, but in the end there was just too much space where nothing was happening. I will have to add some more complexity in those areas to make it work better.

Above is the photo of "Mystery Mountain" that I did a few weeks back before I went to Toronto. I am quite happy with it but I am not sure about the dark area at the bottom and I am wondering about cropping that part off when I frame it. If you have an opinion please let me know. There are some wonderful color combinations in it when you see it up close. Click on the image to have a look. Oh the joy of printmaking, I love it!