Loch Morlich: the Cairngorms- How I made this print.

I return again and again to the car parks on the northern banks of Loch Morlich. I have painted many plein aire watercolour sketches of the view across to the Cairngorms - both on my own and with Sarah Furby (brother's wife) and my Mother Pam Furby - both artists. I have made several collagraphs of this view. It is interesting to see how my technique has become more realistic. 

Paintings

Old prints - all sold or discarded.

This is my new plate - the mountains were traced from the second pleine aire painting above - the trees I took from some of my photographs. I have painted in the highlights of the mountains, loch and clouds with Liquitex gloss varnish.

Next I made a stencil with masking tape. Then painted wood glue on in a tree pattern and sprinkled carborandum on the glue - carborandum really retains the ink and makes an intense colour. I shook off the extra carborandum and took off the masking tape - then when the glue was dry I sealed the carborandum with Johnsons Klear. Carborandum likes to escape and makes little dots everywhere.

Then I made masking tape stencils of the rocks - and applied tiling cement which I pressed with rough sandpaper to get a texture.

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I painted the wee pine with Akua Carborandum

I cut the trees with a Dremmel and the grass with a scalpel and sealed it with Shellac

The next day I inked it up - a la poupee, Only 4 colours - I must print more snow scenes!

This is the first trial print - I made a few adjustments - particularly in the foreground. I always need a few prints before the plate starts working.

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Then disaster - this is what happens when you daydream whilst printing - my trusty little xcut xpress decided to eat my plate!

However, all was not lost. Like many collagraph artists I like serendipitous marks - they tend to come with collagraphs. So the image on the left is the pre disaster print and the image on the right is the post disaster print. I completed my now variable edition of 10.