Chine collee on dry point acetate sheets using the Cuttlebug as a press

More 30 days In My Journal

On this spread I used a Tim Holtz slide die cut.
I have been experimenting with using a Cuttlebug as a printing press with dry point on acetate sheets; I pushed archival stamp ink into the cuts I had drawn in to the sheet to make a face. I printed on damp paper so you can see the different attempts.
It also worked for chine collee - I inked up the plates and then laid collage elements face down on top, glued the back surfaces (facing up) and laid damp paper on top - which means the collage sticks to the paper and the dry point prints through making a kind of sandwich .. v pleased with this experiment:) 
I alos used the Cuttlebug to make lino cuts from a fish cut I did - again using Whispers archival ink pads, also worked - yay!!

Using Chine-collé Dry Point Prints in collaged journal pages

I decided to use the mermaid prints I made at my printing workshop to illustrate a spread on the subject of "Mermaid Tales."
The inspiration is T.S. Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock with the mermaid imagery:-

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

  I do not think they will sing to me.

  I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

  We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown            
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


I used watercolour spray paint for the background and collaged on some embossed rectangles cut from a decorated page and embossed with Cuttlebug textures.

I used two complete chine-collé mermaid prints and then cut out the mermaids from other prints I had made.

I tried to bring the whole page together with an overlay of cut out and collaged waves.

Art Journal Every Day plus Strathmore Workshop 2 plus Dry Point Printing

This post is a real mix up because it uses lots of things I have been working with.

The inspiration is Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's wonderful Art Journal Every Day.

Sadly I haven't - but I have done much more journalling than I otherwise would have done.

I have had a busy time lately as our daughter came to stay with her 3 children, 6, 4 and 2 - it was great fun but there was no time for anything apart from the paddling pool, water table, tree house and bouncy castle! (A tiny garden one!!)

When they went home I started to catch up with my e-mails and  amongst the links to the latest Balzer Designs  posts I saw this great idea of journalling a month of faces:

"I am trying an art journaling experiment for June.  Normally I do a very diary-like version of art journaling every day.  As long as I sit down for a few minutes and say something about my day, I can tick it off of my "to do" list.  For the month of June I've decided to do something a little different.  My big daily art journal has been sent away, as a spread in it is being published.  I was trying to figure out what to do about that.  And the idea hit me square in the face. 

I have drawn a grid of thirty boxes in one of my other smaller journals.  And every day this month I will art journal by drawing a face in one of the boxes.  Some days I may include text.  Some days not.  Some days the faces may be colored.  Other days, just scribbly pencil marks. "  

- see http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs -



This really hit me as I realised that I had some grids which I did for the Strathmore workshop 2 and had never used  - see first image - and also that I had a load of faces.

I have been doing an Edgar Allan Poe swap on ATCsforall.com so I had been drawing Aubrey Beardsley-like images for that.

THEN I went to my monthly Practice Your Printing Workshop at Unique Cottage  Studio. I hadn't had time to do anything new and was planning to play with plates I had already done.

When I got there - doh! - I found I had forgotten  my plates.

 But I did have my sketch book full of the Poe drawings.

So I used one of my swap drawings and etched it onto an acetate plate to use at the workshop.


It is a shameless plagiarism of Beardsley's  "Of a Neophyte and How the Black Art was Revealed unto him by the fiend Asomuel" .


I liked this as an image of the usher twins, Roderick and Madeline, and their impending doom.

The first image is the original drawing and the second is the first print off the etched plate (this reverses the image).

I wanted to try À la poupée, adding coloured backgrounds and chine-collée again
 

À la poupée

À la poupée describes the technique of using cotton buds to add printing ink to particular areas of the prepared plate, so I played with red ink. First time I did the twins with red lips and gave Madeline a red scarf and the second time gave Madeline a blue scarf and red hair/turban/ whatever it is!

It is - as you can see!- quite hard to make an accurate mark but I like the effect and will try this again

Another way of adding colour is to roll a second colour onto the prepared plate - again the experiment was not too successful!


The colour I used was much too dark to really see the printed image, so once more I shall try this again.

Chine-collée

I also had another go at  chine-collée  -  and once more the image was too pale again BUT we had no scrim available and the scrim does seem particularly important to force the ink into the etched lines as several of us had problems with under-inked prints....

I prepared the plate and added chocolate wrappers right side down plus a wonderful quote I found in an old Dumas book which was so appropriate "I depart, my brother, and nothing retains me here, I presume".
The wrong side of the collage papers faces up and has to be coated with Pritt Stick.

The print goes onto newsprint paper on the press and the damped printing paper goes face down on top of this and the collage is sandwiched together with the ink from the plate forcing through.

I came home with my prints and when I saw Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's faces prompt I decided they were an ideal chance to catch up with the Art Journal Every Day project as I could do a 5 day spread of faces and then carry on from 7th June doing a face a day (- which means I have one to do tomorrow!)

So I cut out my drawing and the prints and added them to the journal spread. The white of the faces looked very stark against the background so I tinted them with Pentel Aquash watercolour crayons (thanks again to Strathmore Workshops for putting me on to these!) - I love these because the pigment is intense, plus you can add the marks exactly where you want them, then use water to turn them into as subtle or intense an effect as you want.

I used image transfers for labelling and added a description of what I was trying to do in sepia artists' pens. 

So  - I have a double page spread that starts me on my month of faces, uses my Strathmore pages, and gives me a record of my printing experiments so that I can try to learn from past errors during the Printing Workshop on July 16th!

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!

Dry Point printing using acetate sheets

I have just done a course on dry point and chine-collé  run by Claire Morris Wright of Leicester Print Workshop at the Unique Farm Cottage Studios near my home in Lincolnshire UK.

Dry point is a technique known as intaglio where the image was drawn on an acetate sheet using a sharp pointed tool.

You can add texture with dots, cross hatching etc.

I put an acetate sheet over a sketch I did of a romantic lady surrounded by butterflies.

Water based printing ink was spread onto a glass plate and evened with a roller and this was applied to the acetate. The ink needs to be scrubbed into the lines and the excess removed with scrim or a soft rag.


The acetate went face down  in the printing press between newsprint on top of well dampened paper  and the image - reversed - was then printed.

I used the same technique for the leaf prints which I intended to scan to use as digital backgrounds. The second  image  has had an extra coating of ink rolled on after the plate had been  prepared for printing.

Chine-collé

Chine-collé is a wonderful technique for adding colour and texture to a dry point print. We added light weight papers, fabric, and text to the prepared acetate plate. These additional pieces were laid right side down and then the backs of the added papers were covered in glue (using just an ordinary glue stick).

On the printing press the plate was laid on top of newsprint and the dampened paper for the final print was placed on top of it. More newsprint was laid on and the print went through the press.

The collaged papers become part of the print with the printed lines on the plate showing through the collage paper.

This is a really interesting technique and I am going to a Practice your Printing workshop on May 6th with some ready prepared acetate sheets to try out some more ideas!