Printing Collagraph Ponies!

After Christmas we decided to go for a wintery walk to work off all that food and in our local nature reserve there is a herd of Exmoor ponies running wild. Sometimes you can spot them but as it is such a big place you can very often miss them. This time we were so lucky to just walk into them grazing and I managed to get quite a few photos which of course I had to use in my artwork!

I decided to work on a new pony collagraph print: Collagraph Print - created from a card plate made by adding glue, paint, enamel, collaged elements etc. This creates textures which hold the ink in varying degrees and is then printed through the intaglio process. 

This is the very start of  the process a piece of spare mount board which I have drawn the rough image onto and am starting to work into with paint.

 A few days later and the printing plate is ready to print! I love working with card as it is so easy to cut out and shape especially for my animal prints.

Heres where it starts to get messy! This is my dining room table with all my inks and my etching printing press layed out. I decided to use a sepia coloured etching ink and I am starting ro rub the ink into the printing plate to cover every part of it.

I then have to take the ink back off the printing plate usually with newspaper and tissue paper. You can see I do get very inky!

The inked up printing plate ready to be printed. The ink has been retained in the rougher areas of the printing plate and where you can see white the plate is a lot smoother so won't hold the ink.

On my etching press ready for some dampened paper to go on top and then the blanket and then the whole lot put through the press. The weight of the roller will force the ink into the paper, leaving it slightly embossed.

Hot off the press-the moment when all is revieled!

The printing plate on the right and the finished print comparison. Note the print is reversed so you always have to remember to work backwards!

A few pony prints drying on my spare room bed!

Heres the finished pony collagraph print. I should be printing it in a few different colours soon too!

Sepia Pony Collagraph Print

Clare xx