More Dry Point printing and Chine-collé

On Friday  I went to practice dry point and chine-collé  at the Unique Farm Cottage Studios near my home in Lincolnshire UK.

Because the studios have a printing press there all the time they are going to do monthly untutored sessions for £10 a session and the idea is that all the materials - papers  and inks etc -  will be there and the people who are attending help one another.

Luckily there was one attendee in particular who was very experienced, which was just as well as it is amazing how much I had forgottten - another reason for keeping the information correctly in my brain by writing it down in  this blog!

I also prepared plates in advance this time.

    For a total of £20.66 I went to Great Art  and I bought 2 packets of 10 Rhenalon Boards, 0.5mm, 11 x 15 cm  (approx 4" x 6" )  and 4 etching needles.

The Rhenalon Boards are like the clear acetate sheets I used at the tutored  workshop but they are a little thicker. I find I prefer them because there is less likelihood of cross hatching so vigorously that I go through the sheet and have to repair it with masking tape - like I did with my butterfly lady in the previous blog. She spent the day looking like a pirate with an eye patch!

The etching needles are one fine tip, one  bold tip, one oblique oval and one four sided oblique. I cannot claim to have exhausted all the opportunites with these! But I traced some of my mermaids on to the Rhenalon Boards and tried a variety of shading. 

The inks this time were oil based, a bit messier and harder to use, but there is a great advantage in that the prints can be over painted with water based paints. I used wet wipes to clean me and the plates as soap and water did not do much - also I was told that you can use cooking oil to clean up with...

I made a couple of prints with mermaidy green ink - and I shall have a go at adding extra water colour washes to these.

 

Then I had another try at Chine-collé.

I prepared the plate as usual, this time with black ink.


I had a mixture of green tones of paper and some old books to cut up for text. I also had green tissue paper and some gold paper off an Easter egg (which we had to eat of course - yum!)

Then I used a variety of papers and text right side down with prit-stick glue on the reverse (facing upwards)  -

There has to be a method of placing the glued papers down onto the plate without sticking myself to them with the glue!

I found the thin turquoise tissue paper was by far the worst!

The prepared plate goes on to the printing press. Newsprint is laid down first, then the plate - facing upwards - is added, then dampened printing paper is laid over the print, with more newsprint on top.

This goes through the press and, because of the glue, the collage papers become part of the print and the ink shows through the collaged papers.

The final print uses red ink and I left lots of ink on the plate so there was a lot of colour from the ink

Then I used tissue paper for "waves" - unfortunately some of these lifted during printing leaving lighter areas.

Luckily I really liked the final effect! When I got home I used a layer of matt acrylic medium to make sure all the "waves" were securely fixed to the print.

I love this technique and will try more next time  - probably planning the papers to add beforehand -  although I do enjoy the happy accidents!