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Author: Sarah_Wittmer, Contributing Editor
| You find a scrap of mat board in the free bin at your local art store, but it's too small to use for anything useful - or so you think. Your desk is cluttered with the pieces of a drawing or painting you tore up in frustration (you can admit it, we've all done it). There are scraps of fabric lying around everywhere and you know you have the end of a roll of yarn under your bed. Tiny scraps, but you're a pack rat, like me, and don't want to throw them away: what do you do with them?
Simple. Dive head-first into the world of printmaking by putting together a collagraph plate. Collagraphs are prints made from a plate that's a collage of everything that seems useless built on a piece of mat board or other similiar surface. You can print with ink or without - the printing process creates an embossing that's pleasant without any ink at all. You can find examples in this thread. You'll need the following:
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| You'll need to start with a sketch. On newsprint or some other cheap paper, trace your mat board (this is your plate!) to give yourself a nice idea of the size you're working with. Anything outside this box won't end up on your plate, which means it won't print, which means it's worthless, so don't bother.
Collagraphs love texture, and texture loves collagraphs. This is NOT the technique to use to experiment with solid shapes or lines - that's just about every other kind of printmaking I know of. When selecting your subject, pick something with texture you can duplicate. I've had good success with flowers and butterflies. In general, animals work great, and for those of you (like me) who can't draw or paint fur to save your life, this is a great way to include those pesky animals in your portfolios. With this in mind, I've selected several photographs from the Reference Image Library of eagles to serve as references (thanks Trimoon and echidna). Here's my initial sketch (I think my plate's 7x8.5", but don't quote me on that.) It does NOT need to be incredibly detailed; a lot of detail will be added because of the textures you choose, so why bother drawing it? |
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| Now to transfer it onto the plate. You're probably familiar with ways to transfer sketches onto plates, but I'll include this anyway. Do NOT simply draw your sketch directly onto the plate; you'll need to be able to transfer the sketch several different times, and if it's on the plate, you'll have problems.
One way is to use carbon paper, that's the cleanest and simplest. Unfortunately, we don't have any carbon paper, so here's the next best thing. Rub the back of your sketch with charcoal, pastel, or graphite dust - preferably a dark color; your plate's going to be ugly as sin anyway so you might as well be able to see what you're doing. (To use this transfer technique with a painting, you'd probably want to use a lighter color pastel so it didn't show up as much.) Put your sketch charcoal (or whatever) side down on top of your plate, and trace with a colored pencil, pressing moderately hard. If you use a different color than what you sketched with, then you'll be able to see quite easily what's been transferred and what hasn't been. (I learned that the hard way.) Once you have it on the plate, go ahead and pick a place to start gluing stuff on. I chose the beak, since tagboard is the easiest to work with and the beak required tagboard's smooth texture. Transfer the part of the sketch you're working with onto your material. (See what I mean about drawing directly onto the plate? If you did, TROUBLE!) Here's my beak and eye. |
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