Collagraph: Morocco

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Morocco 6.8 x 4.7 Collagraph with Watercolor

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Available in my Etsy Shop.
Another matboard and paper collagraph, using the same methods as in previous pieces here, and here.  The reference photo was snapped in a suburb of Los Angeles – at the Brand Library in Glendale. The beautiful, Moroccan architecture of the building stands out against the oak tree and scrub hillside it’s nestled against.

Building the plate

 The substrate is a scrap piece of matboard, and in the photo above, I’m cutting and adhering kid-grade construction paper in layers with Gloss Medium Varnish. This will dry hard and a little slick, making the whole plate feel like plastic, so it’s tough enough to ink and wipe and can easily withstand the pressure under the press.

After applying black ink and wiping with newsprint

Once the plate is dry, it can be inked and wiped, which leaves traces of ink along all the curbs of cut out paper, and inside any line work I incised with an exacto (the pattern on the floor, etc.)’

After a trip through the press

The inked plate is laid on the press bed, and a soaked and blotted sheet of printmaking paper is laid on top of the inked plate.  That paper will get pushed hard into all the little crevices and curbs of the plate, picking up the ink that’s left in the recessed areas. Then I get to re-ink the plate, and make an edition of 10 of these prints, and then paint each one whichever way suits my fancy that day. How fun is that? (Yes, I thought so too.)  🙂 Now, grab some art supplies, and make something.

Art Quote
I’ve been looking at what I painted last winter & the previous summer & they have made me very sad – I actually suffer when I look at them. They are so far from what I thought they were – poor & thin, labored & bad. Nothing I have begun shows yet the slightest promise & there are such a lot of them lying about my room. It is notably a chamber of horrible stupidities… Dennis Miller Bunker 1889

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