Rope of Words 5 - Collograph 2

I invested in a two-day workshop on collograph.

• It's not worth learning this from books.
• Teachers give a far better insight into the process.
• The materials are supplied.
• You need to learn how to use the specialist equipment - e.g. the pressure of the rollers etc.

So on the first day, we made our plates and put shellac on them.
On the second day we inked our plates and printed from them.


Here is the demonstration by Janet Lueck, a talented collographer (!?) at the Oxford Printmaker's Co-op. 

The plate is inked up.

This is done using a wodge of J-cloth or a 4cm square of mountboard and the thick etching ink is pushed into every single crevice. As you can see everything gets very inky and it takes planning to "work clean"
Here is the etching ink. These days when I learn new processes I photograph materials as a visual record to save taking notes. Etching ink is different from lino ink as it's thicker and stickier (at least, I think that's the difference) It comes in tins or tubes.

The inks are oil based, so you need a good hand cleaner from a shop like Intaglio. You can use water-based inks at school, such as Caligo or Speedball, but they aren't quite as nice to work with.

The ink is wiped off again.

This is called "burnishing the plate". It is the same idea as etching except that there is a greater variety of texture. The parcel-tape areas (see yesterday's blog) wipe off to just about zero ink, while the sandpaper and carborundum areas hold the ink. This needs fine-tuning as every wipe mark gets printed, so it can easily take an hour to get the desired effect. You need practise and to understand the materials.

We used Somerset Satin printing paper 300gsm. 

100% cotton art PAPERS

Printing paper contains less size e.g. BFK Rives, Somerset Satin or Somerset Velvet.

Watercolour paper is finished by pressing between cold rollers and has the texture of the felts. It is sized but not excessively. If you write on it, it won't bleed, whereas Somerset will.

Hot Pressed paper is 'sort-of ironed' between hot rollers and has a very smooth texture so it's good for super-sharp calligraphy but is just not so yummy to handle, as it looks a bit like card. 
I'm a bit of a Philistine here in that I would always choose the feel of the paper over the sharpness of the letters.

The paper is soaked and excess water is rolled off

OKAY, so the paper is soaked for anything up to 20 minutes, then placed between a few layers of blotting paper and rolled with the huge roller to squeeze out excess water. At OCP there are very large soaking trays and piles of blotting paper.

Then the plate is laid face up on the printing press (whoops, I forgot to photograph it) and damp paper is gently positioned on the plate. Newsprint is laid on top. These are standard precautions so that the blankets don't get your ink all over them for the next poor person in the printing queue.

The plate is rolled through the press

Janet laid three blankets over the plate/paper/newsprint and rolled the printing press over them. 
If anyone can recognise a 50's washing machine with rollers: well it's similar but much bigger, heavier and designed for printing large sheets of paper. Which makes collograph inaccessible without a printing press*

When Janet picked up her print, the ink had transferred - see picture on the left, and the print was embossed. The plate is on the right, print on the left.

I am sure you will agree that we have two works of art here, the plate and the print.
The plate is cleaned with ordinary cooking oil (not extra virgin olive oil - a waste!) There is always a residue of ink which gives the plate it's patina.

Back to my Rope of Words - I am concerned that this process is too monochromatic for this book, but I'll give it a bash and try to introduce more colour as I did in "Head". I do think its a great process though.


* There is a small home /school printer designed for collographs called "The Major-George A2 portable printer press" www.majorgeorge.co.uk
Kim Major George has also written a comprehensive book on collograph which you can view on her website.