Part 5: Project 13 - Personal Investigation Combining Printmaking with Chine Colle'

 Brainstorming:

I started this project wanting to continue my exploration of abstraction and nature using collagraphs with the chine colle' to go another step further from the previous project in part 4.

Light, pattern, shapes, seeing what is usually 'unseen' in the world fascinates me because I often find myself looking at nature more closely and seeing the beauty. It is so easy to miss what is right under our noses by rushing through life and not really noticing what beauty there is around us.

Nature fills me with happiness and I feel really alive when I am outside seeing the beauty around me. Even in the dullest of days there is beauty to be seen.

I started by brainstorming ideas on Post it notes;

The subject of light kept popping up so I began taking photos of different light that I felt drawn to.

Here I'm looking at the relationship of the sun glowing through the clouds, viewing through the shrub branches. The starkness of the bare branches with the bursts of light really interests me because I like the seemingly ugliness made beautiful by the glow of light upon it and the shapes created between the branches.

I kept looking each day outside in our garden and on dog walks for more inspiration. Since it is currently Christmas there are a lot of beautiful Christmas lights outside people's houses and I just love walking around our town and looking at them all. They make a gloomy, dark dog walk far more enjoyable this time of year. I started looking at the different types of lights. A lot of them didn't photograph well up close. I was looking for a nice balance of colour and glow. In our market square we have a large Christmas tree and the lights on there really did look pretty up close and far away.

You can also see the patterns of the tree branches and pine needles against the pretty, colourful lights. This last photo in particular got me thinking more about views 'through' things in nature. In the last project I focused on the landscape as a whole, this time I wanted to zoom into a 'scene' and show what you can see if you look closer.

Another inspiration of mine this time of year is frost. I waited patiently for a frost here so I could take some amazing photos of frosty spider webs. They can be incredibly beautiful. I am not a fan of spiders, but the intricacy of a spiders web dotted with dew or laced in frost is a beautiful example of God's intricate Creation.

Typically we did not get a frost and when we did there was not a spider web to be found in our garden. However I did manage to get these interesting photos.

I continued my research looking at frosty, Winter days;

Intending to create a moodboard I tore out frosty images from Country Living magazine and Period Living magazine, looking for things that reflected my inspirations. The full pages were so beautiful I decided not to rip them up and just keep them as they are.

With no frosty spider webs in sight I had to resort to a royalty free image to give me a guide for the design of the web.

Pixabay. 2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.pexels.com/photo/arachnid-branches-close-up-cobweb-276243/> [Accessed 4 January 2021].

Using these images as inspiration I started working on some sketches on my iPad using Procreate. I knew I wanted to do something where the viewer would be looking through a frosty cobweb to a Christmas tree with lights on but I wasn't sure whether to add in any trees or branches. I didn't want it to look too overcrowded but wondered if I might need an extra element to create more depth.

iPad Sketches:

I decided to try a simpler design of the tree and spider web and see if it worked on the collagraph. The modelling paste worked so well last time I hoped I could create the web effect with that. Looking back at my test collagraph from part 4, the dry rice looked really effective so I thought it would work well for the tree needles. The collage papers would make up the lights and I'd use texture gel for the speckled, frosty path.

Sketchbook page:

I also began testing the selection of thin papers I had purchased to see how they reacted with both PVA and Pritt stick glues. In all the test swatches none of the colours ran with either glue, which was good. I decided in the end to use Pritt stick because it was less messy and I was using a lot of PVA for my collagraph elements.

Working out the elements.

I chose three colours from my selection of papers which are colours I find uplifting and happy. I wanted to improve my colours from my previous prints to colours that are more true to my personal voice.

Boards in progress:

I made two boards, one for the monochrome prints and the other for the coloured prints.

Stage one of the collagraphs - rice and texture gel.

Next stage - adding modelling paste

Carving into the modelling paste with a palette knife to create a spider web.

The modelling paste dried really nicely, leaving all these cracks which 

I hoped would should on the collagraph.

 

First Prints:

These first prints were about getting my colours right, seeing if the collagpraph worked and deciding how big I wanted the coloured 'lights' to be. Firstly I did a print with a light covering of ink and quite small circles of paper for the lights.

I quite liked how delicate this looked but knew it needed more work on it. I liked the coloured lights but wondered what they might look like much bigger.

This second print was much more successful, the colours were right, it had more depth and the rice was creating a really lovely texture for the tree. However there wasn't enough of the texture, it was too patchy. The larger coloured lights stood out more but I wasn't sure if they were now too big? The major part I wasn't happy with was the spider web was virtually invisible. All that lovely texture I created with the modelling paste did not show at all. You couldn't tell what it even was. So then I went back to the drawing board to decide what to do next.

I thought about whether to add branches and what I could do to improve the spider web. I didn't want to spoil the collagraph's I had already made so I photographed the prints and put them into Procreate to draw on top of to play around with further ideas.

iPad Sketches:

I used these sketches to decide about positioning of the web, the colour of it, the pattern/shape of it and then whether to add more large light colours and or more gold.

I concluded I liked the smaller lights best but add more of them as well as the gold. I also prefer the web white so am going to try doing that first before using any darker colours. I thought about how I could make the web stand out more and referring back to my test Collagraph again from part 4 I decided the thick wool would be best to add to define the shape much more.

Additions to the Collagraphs:

I went back to my Collagraph's and added  more rice to improve the amount of texture in those areas and then I added wool in the shape of the spiders web.

Next Prints:

I decided to try printing with the white ink for the web to see if it would show up.

The white ink did not show up very well at all, I also tried tearing the papers into circles instead of cutting them but I did not like how this ended up looking because it looks more scruffy and messy.

I then tried using grey ink for the web which turned out much better but again I did not like the torn paper look on this one.

For the next few prints I was experimenting with the paper sizes, placement and how I glued them down. I was having an especially hard time trying to get the gold leaf to stick. I tried all kind of ways but it just kept falling apart and either sticking onto the collagraph or just not sticking at all to the paper. In the end I had to add it after I had printed using a dab of glue and using the paper either side of it to slide it into place. I then brushed the excess off once it was dry.

These three prints came out a lot better and picked up the texture of the rice well, the spider web and the pop of coloured papers and gold leaf really stand out. I still felt like I wasn't achieving what I set out to do with this design. I then tried using my second collagraph and changed colours to a more monochrome palette to see how that would look.

I liked the contrast of the black and grey with the pink but felt this was getting poorer in quality and so I decided to switch papers from the Winsor and Newton Cartridge to the Strathmore Printmaking paper, cut to a smaller size and make paper masks to mask off areas on my second collagraph. Using the minimal colours I wanted to see if by zooming in I could create a more effective print.

These prints came out much better and the web stands out a lot more. Overall I don't feel I achieved the design I set out to create. Despite doing a lot of creative problem solving during the printing process, trying out lot's of versions and techniques I couldn't get the look I wanted. I think in the end I didn't need to add more rice to the collagraph. I added too much overall and that made it quite heavy and bulky which affected the prints. My original second test print had some really nice elements to it and I wish I had just added the wool instead of adding more rice. This has been a big learning curve for me and I think less is definitely more when it comes to my style.