Artistic Explorations: Intaglio Printmaking (4)

My visit to Isle of Harris (Na Hearadh in Gaelic) in November continues to give me new ideas for art projects. This time I chose one of my photos of a ruined chapel as my starting point. It was taken along the Scholar's Path. This path was once the main access (on foot) to the crofting townships along this stretch of coast, before the "Golden Road" was built closer to the shore.  It was used by school children to walk to the school at Grosebay on the other side of the peninsula, and then to Kyles Stockinish when a school was built there.

Ruined chapel along Scholar's Path ©Fenfolio2014

The vibrant colours in the picture above are the result of one of the creative features on my compact camera. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't as in this case. It just didn't represent the right atmosphere so I edited the photo into a more monochromatic one by using a few apps on my Ipad. In this way the rich, earthy textures of Harris' dramatic landscape are the main focus.

Edited photo of ruined chapel ©Fenfolio2014

Back in my studio I created a collagraph plate on a 20 x 20 cm grey board and used various materials such as netting, wood shavings, black lava gel, natural sand, Asian paper, scraps of woodchip wallpaper, scraps of fabric and dried grasses. I also scraped into the grey board with a etching needle.

Once I sealed the plate with Shellac and taped up the back with parcel tape, I inked it up with Caligo waterbased ink (sepia). Before I ran it through the press I placed pieces of my own handmade paper from an old blouse (see: Artistic Explorations: Handmade Paper (2)) with some spray mount facing up onto my inked plate. This is called Chine Collé. Finally I placed a sheet of Somerset Soft White printmaking paper on top of that and this is the final print.

Collagraph print with chine collé "Na Hearadh I " ©Fenfolio2015

For the second print I used brown/black ink, orange and green kozo-like paper and Somerset White Velvet printmaking paper. A completely different result! Now I'm vary curious to see how it will look when I use coloured inks combined with chine collé so that's what I'm up to next.

Collagraph print with chine collé "Na Hearadh II " ©Fenfolio2015