Reverse Collage

These prints were the result of a happy accident.

I was working with inexpensive calligraphy paper. For the price, $2 for 60 sheets, it's a wonderful paper -- strong, with a smooth finish and a generous size (9.5x13-inches).

But it's lightweight and a little thin to handle printmaking ink. In the photo below you can see how the soy oil in the Akua Intaglio inks has spread into the margin. In effect, the print itself becomes transparent. I had fun exploiting what, at first, seemed like a bit of a disaster.

I had started out with a landscape idea and carved this block:

I made a blended roll with yellow ochre and a grey ink named Graphite that I thinned with some Akua Transparent Base. My block was 7.5x6-inches but after working with it for a bit I decided to cut it down to 6x4-inches. At this smaller size it worked for 7x5-inch cards and also for 8x10-inch mats. (I matted both sizes but I preferred the white border I got with the smaller block.)

Then the fun began! Digging through my box of tissue scraps, most of them hand-stained with watered-down fluid acrylic paint, I auditioned different colours to see the effect under the print. Sometimes the scrap was already the perfect shape to suggest hills, like below.

Auditioning moons and/or suns:

I like the mix of the natural world with a graphic element and used a circle punch for the moon. But they could easily be hand-cut for a more organic shape.

With that same idea, I created hills (and a marsh) with straight lines.

I used a glue stick to attach the collage pieces to the underside of the print (a "reverse" of the usual collage technique) and found it hard to get a smooth enough application that the glue didn't show through the sky portion of the print. But that was another happy accident. The glue itself often created a pleasing texture and provided subtle variations of colour, as in the sky below.

I also had fun creating imagined shadowed dips in the land. Then I found this woodblock print in my tissue scraps:

I snipped it out. Being thin tissue I didn't have to do an overly careful cut. Layered under the grass print, it looks like this:

This opens up many possibilities for future prints layered with reverse collage. And not only that, it's an opportunity to work on composition without committing myself. I played around sliding the tree closer to the sun:

Or lowering the tree:

Excited to see where this leads! More soon.

Pears Paired but not Pared!

Apologies for the word play but it was hard to resist! I haven't spent much time in the studio lately. The garden is calling and I'm still infatuated with using plant material to dye fabric. As I write, linen and cotton samples are soaking in the warmth of the greenhouse in a dye pot of stinging nettle. For the first time, I'm eager for the ever-so-invasive mint to make a show -- it's supposed to be a good plant for the dye pot. And so is lemon balm, another troublesome self-sower. Meanwhile, I thought I'd share the process for what I call my "Wonky Pears."

They start with a loose collage of small squares of the Saturday Globe & Mail newspaper which my thoughtful friend Nancy saves for me. I look for text on an ideally solid-coloured background. Like these:

To counter my precise nature I quickly chop the paper into roughly 1-inch squares. 

And, just as quickly, glue them down on a 5x7-inch card blank, ending up with a rectangle and a somewhat even border.

I add a smaller collage for the back of the card.

I could be spontaneous and simply glue down the squares as I pick them up. But I wanted a good mix of the text for the body of the pear and found it useful to lay out the squares on a spare card, as below, and then transfer and glue them one by one.

Then I roll out some black ink and ink a piece of wax paper. I'll use this to transfer my drawing, a technique called a "trace monotype". You could ink up pretty much any type of smooth non-absorbent surface like parchment paper, a foil potato chip bag, even a plastic grocery sack but California printmaker Anne Moore suggests wax paper and I like how it allows you to see the drawn lines from the back. Here I used Akua Intaglio in Carbon Black, a warm yet intense black.

To protect the white border of the card from ink smudges I use a protective paper frame. Some artists like the smudges but I find them distracting.

I also lay an identical paper frame on top of the inked wax paper as a guide to center the drawing in the collage.

Then I take a deep breath and blindly draw a pear. That's how they got the name "Wonky"! I can't really see what I'm drawing, although enough of the drawn line becomes visible on the back of the wax paper to guide me. You can draw with anything -- pencil, chop stick, ball-point pen, end of a paint brush -- and vary the thickness of the inked line. For example, a stubby carpenter's pencil with a dull point gives a  strong, bold line. I used an ordinary HB pencil.

The wax paper is flipped, below,  for a clearer view.

Here's a test drawing:

I didn't get the best bottom on the pear. With a bottom like that, it would tip to the right. This one was better:

Someone asked me why I don't simply draw the pear on the collaged rectangle. I tried that and, to me, the drawing lost energy. The risk of drawing blind translates to a looseness I like. Also there is a unique quality to the line itself that can only be had by the transfer of ink. That's the appeal of trace monotypes -- that soft, slightly burred line. 

Now you don't have to draw free-hand like I did -- you can trace an existing drawing. Or even a photo. For excellent and inspiring examples, check out Belinda del Pesco, another California printmaker.

This is as far as I planned to go. Chop up the text, lay down the collage, ink the wax paper and draw a pear. But I was disappointed in the result. Something was missing. The pear didn't really stand out against the busy-ness of the collage. It happened that I had some white gouache (opaque watercolour) on hand. Using a small brush and the gouache thinned with a little water, I started to paint out the background and liked how just a little bit of the collaged newspaper showed through. And I also particularly liked how the gouache highlighted the edge of the collage (bottom of the photo).

 

One thing I forget is that gouache dries darker (watercolour is lighter after it dries) and I might have preferred a bit more of the collage to show through. More like the next example (I'm having a think if I leave it this rough or tidy it up -- leaning towards the rougher and looser background.)

On some cards I also did a small version of a pear on the back. 

It was time-consuming and there was always the possibility, after the work of completing the larger pear on the front, of screwing up the drawing and/or smudging the ink. So I carved a little pear from a scrap of soft-cut rubber and now stamp the back of the cards.

Then a friend came by and said the Wonky Pears were crying out to be matted for framing. We dug out a mat and had a look and -- darn! -- they looked good! Thanks, Elizabeth!

Here are some waiting to be matted:

And with mats:

And one I framed for my kitchen:

For now that is the end of posts on pears but I'm sure pears will make an appearance again somewhere down the line. Maybe even a pair of pears. Or perhaps pared pears...

Sorry.