Printmaking on my Dining Room Table!

When I put one of my prints online I always say "printed on my dining room table". Here's a little tour of where I produce my prints:

My etching press takes pride of place on my dining room table, we normally have to eat around it if we want to use the table for its proper use! The printing press (which is a bit heavy!) is only moved once a year at Christmas so I can decorate the table and have a proper festive meal!

Here's my lovely press, its a bit battered now and well used but still prints great. I mostly do collagraphs and the occasional linocut print on it and it is perfect for up to A3 size paper. I would love a slightly bigger one but haven't the money or space at the moment.Yes there is a Dalek cookie jar which lives behind it and threatens to Exterminate me if I don't behave!

Hippo Collagraph Print

Here's one of Hippo collagraph prints hot off the printing press!

Temple of Concordia Collagraph Print

And the stunning Temple of Concordia in Sicily.

Because I print from my dining room table I wanted to use non-toxic inks as I didn't want to have the smell and mess of cleaning everything up with white spirit (especially as I usually get ink all over me, the light switches, door handles etc!) I started using the Caligo Safewash etching inks which are oil based but can be cleaned up really easily with water while they are still wet, which is perfect for working from home. This is a photo of some of my very messy inks!

Even though I always wear gloves I always somehow manage to get inky hands!

 Other parts of my house are used in the printmaking process! My bath is used to soak the paper slightly before printing and I have a pile of old towels to blot the paper!

The spare room bed makes a convenient "drying rack" for my prints and can often be found covered in hippos, cats etc!

 

  My other work space is the spare room which has a desk for painting, sewing etc and has to be hastily packed away when anyone comes over to stay!

Elephant Collagraph Printing Plates

  I always take my photos in the garden to make the most of the natural light. The garden table is handy for taking photos - here's my elephant collagraph printing plates before they have been inked and printed.

Hippo Swim Collagraph Print

We have a marble fireplace in the living room which gives a good backdrop for some of my listing photos, I have to clear everything off the mantle piece first though!

Elephant 2 Collagraph Print

Here's another view!

 Hope you enjoyed a behind the scenes look at my printmaking and home "studio"!

Clare xx

How to Print a Squirrel!

My squirrel watercolour and ink painting proved very popular and I had great fun painting her. She was a squirrel that kept coming to our forest cabin we were staying in near York a few years ago and loved coming for the peanuts we had left out for the visiting badgers! I decided to make a collagraph print of her too and to do a bit of experimental printing to try and get all the colours. I printed all the colours on one plate with just one pass through the press. Here's how I did it:

Squirrel Watercolour Painting

This is the collagraph printing plate ready to be printed. It is made out of mountboard and various textures are added to the surface so that it can be printed as an intaglio print.



Getting messy adding a mix of blue and black oil based printing ink all over the printing plate until the whole of it is covered in a layer of ink.



 Wiping the printing plate with newspaper to remove the ink. This leaves the ink in the heavily textured parts of the plate and removes the ink in the smoother areas to print lighter tones and white.



The printing plate fully wiped. At this point it could be printed and it would just be black and white.

Adding some colour to the squirrel. I added a few rubs of brightly coloured inks with a lot of extender medium added so they would be very transparent. They were then wiped gently to leave a smear of colour.

 I then used a stencil of plastic to mask out the squirrel while I coloured the background. I added a very thin layer of green ink a la poupee (with a tightly rolled up piece of cloth) to the background grasses. This meant the original blue/black ink would show through the thin layer of green.

 I then removed the stencil and placed the printing plate on the etching press with a dampened piece of watercolour paper over the top. The whole plate, paper and blanket was passed through the press and then the moment of truth when the print was revealed! You never quite know what you are going to get from the printing plate but I was really pleased with this one and I managed to get six colours printed in one go too!

 

Here's the finished Squirrel collagraph print:

 

Squirrel Collagraph Print

And a close up of some of the detail of the print:

 

Also a close detail of my messy inky hands after my glove split while printing!

 

Clare xx

My Studio Space!

 
I've decided to try and write a few more Blogs this year so this will be the first of many (hopefully!)

I thought I would introduce you all to my "studio" space or spare bedroom/dining room table! This is where all the magic happens!

This is or was my dining room table! My etching press lives on here most of the time and I always have the company of a Dalek or two while I am printing! Normally the cat tries to help too so he often has inky feet!

This my desk in the spare room. Its actually an ingenious design from Ikea and when all the drawers are away it just looks like a normal piece of bedroom furniture but when the big fake top drawer is opened it makes a desk, perfect for painting cats on!

One of my recent oil paintings just waiting for him to dry.

Lots and lots of pencils and paintbrushes ready for action. Totoro and Morph often help out too! The boxes in the background are where all my greeting cards live ready to be posted out.

 A few of my cat (and a sneaky parrot) paintings waiting for new homes. The easiest place to store them is on the walls so they don't get damaged and friends that come and stay always say that sleeping in the spare room is like sleeping in an art gallery!

Clare xx

Printing Pink Hippos!

Normally this time of year I have a sudden rush on one of my prints and then have to hurriedly reprint them to meet demand! This year it has been pink and plum hippo collagraph prints!

I thought I would take a few photos while I was printing as I always like to see behind the scenes of artwork being produced. Its quite difficult taking photos when you are a bit inky but my camera is used to being covered in ink and paint!

Printing a Pink Hippo Collagraph Print

  A Collagraph print is a print produced from a cardboard printing plate which has various textures applied to it. The more texture it has the more ink it retains so it will print darker, the smoother the surface the ink will be wiped off so it will print lighter.

I use bits of spare mountboard to make my collagraph printing plates. Heres one of my most popular ones a Hippo being inked up with pink etching ink. The whole of the printing plate is covered in a layer of ink. The reason the printing plate has a slight blue colour to it is because it was last printed with blue ink and as it is only card it retains the colour slightly.

 Here the Hippo is being wiped gently with a piece of newspaper to take the ink back off again. (My tutor at University always told me to "caress the plate"!)

Here is the printing plate wiped and ready to print on my etching press.

My lovely etching press in action. It lives on my dining room table and is quite heavy to move so we generally eat around it! I really do need a new blanket for it as I accidently printed a meerkat onto it while printing one of my bags!

The dampened paper is placed over the printing plate and then the blanket of the printing press on top and the whole thing is rolled through the press which forces the ink onto the paper and also the weight of it slightly embosses the paper.

The moment of truth when the paper is lifted off the printing plate and the image is revealed! Always a surprise as even thought you plan everything you never quite know what you will get!

The collagraph print hot of the press. You can see the image has reversed, it can be quite strange working backwards all the time but you get used to it!

A whole Pod of Hippos drying on my spare room bed!

The finished prints ready for sale!

Pink Hippo Collagraph Print

Plum Hippo Collagraph Print

Clare xx

Etching

When I did my Fine Art degree in the 90's I specialised in the printmaking technique of Etching.

One of my first etchings of the stairs in Harlech Castle, Wales.

• Heres a basic guide to etching: Etching involves a metal plate being covered with a waxy ground which is resistant to acid. The image is then scraped though the ground with a pointed etching needle so the bare metal is exposed. The metal plate is then put into a bath of acid which bites into the exposed metal leaving grooves. The ground is then cleaned off the plate ready for printing. The plate is inked all over and then the ink wiped off the surface, leaving only the ink in the etched lines which is then put through an etching press which forces the ink into the paper.