Across Scourie Bay - the making of a collagraph print.

This is the collagraph print I made this week - at home on my trusty little xcut xpress. This blog describes how I made the plate.

I usually take the images for my plates from plein aire water colour paintings. I found this preparation for a plate in one of my sketch books - I could not find the original paintings and I actually thought I had already made the plate - but I could not find that either! It is the view from the campsite at Scourie across the bay.

I traced it and transferred it to a piece of mountboard

I painted in the clouds in the sky with liquitex acrylic gloss medium and varnish. I could equally have used wood glue (waterproof pva) I steer clear of unwaterproof pva as it has a nasty habit of deciding to behave like glue with paper.

I went over the lines in the walls with a dremel. The advantage of a dremel over a simple scalpel is that it is easier to make curvy marks - the disadvantage is - you must not press too hard or you make the lines too deep and the paper cannot reach the ink. Unless you want white lines in which case make them nice and deep.

I then made stencils out of masking tape around all things rocky - I spread tiling cement onto the stencil. Pressed coarse sandpaper onto the tiling cement where I wanted texture and then pulled off the masking tape (carefully)

Leaving the textured rocks and cliffs

I added cut lines (scalpel) for the crofts and  grasses. Wood glue for the wee blobs of sheep and flowers and waves, beach and other highlights. I then varnished it with homemade shellac. The next day I inked up the plate a la poupee - using toothbrushes and cloths and printed 2 trial prints and edition of 10. I will post it up on my website later today.