#double plate

eyes telling lies 

detail from an etching print 

Colour - siena - equal parts yellow& red with a very small (varying amounts depending on the layer) amounts of a red/black.

There was scope to get a darker black by using carborundum (not pre mixed into pva glue/paste) than simply cutting away board.

Inking collagraphs

The great thing about collagraph plates is that you can ink them as intaglio and relief at the same time, and get a complex layered image with just one pass through the press. No fiddling around with lining lates up, it all happens in one go. This is what I usually do, as it seems simpler and quicker, with less room for mistakes in registration. However…..

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I decided to ink the plate up again in relief and print it over the top of the intaglio in an effort to salvage it. I rolled over the collagraph plate with a dark colour, roughly aligned this on top of the intaglio print, and ran it through the press.

I noticed that the textured areas were jumping out, the texture appearing even more 3d than usual.

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Printing the intaglio layer and the relief layer separately, deliberately mis-aligning them, creates a hiccup. The two images don’t line up and some of the lighter areas on the intaglio print show alongside the darker relief  print.

This method of inking collagraphs enhances the effect of 3d textures

These images are of double-plated prints. One plate only collograph (textured wall paper) and relief inked and the other the etched plate with the British Rail logo, to which I am trying to add body. The etching was printed first and newspaper print was applied using chine colle.

The aim was then to very lightly ink the second plate and print the collagraph plate over the top add texture to the figural aspects of the etched plate. Unfortunately, as the lhs plate illustrates, the second plate was heavily over-inked on the first attempt.

The second attempt was an improvement but - as is apparent - the chine colle applied newspaper was barely visible. I believe the first plate needs to be carefully but unevenly inked and wiped to give the newspaper the opportunity to be visible in parts and the relief plate inked extremely lightly with a very hard roller to prevent the ink from doing anything except sitting right on the surface of the textured wall paper.

Other useful collagraph materials etc are available from Handover as well as useful guidance on matters such as "buying gold leaf, genuine or imitation, loose of transfer, thickness, etc. I’m going to try and break it down and make it a little easier!"

Double plate print. The first plate is the photo-etch view of St Pancras clock inked with a red-black mix. The second is a free-hand sketch based on the roses photograph (below) in black ink.

Unfortunately, my composition of the roses was careless and I placed them over the top of the tower. On one level (symbolic) this works for me but visually I would prefer to be able to see the clock faces. I could try to burnish elements of the rose to bring the clock more visible.

At this stage, I don't plan on trying to reverse the order of the plates as I want to keep the roses 'inside' the room looking out at the buildings. Placing the roses behind the photo-etch would make it easier to see the clock.

I am still considering what further work to do on the roses plate. My current thoughts are an aquatint to create varying tones on the petals, and also to impress rose leaves into a soft ground.

In the longer term, my plan is to do a completely new photo-etch of St Pancras using my original photograph inverted (see below) and a new free-hand sketch of the roses in which the petals are looser (rather than - as here - with the appearance of being tightly furled up).