Making a collagraph plate - The River Dee

In January 2020 my Mum and I stayed in a cottage in Braemar we made several plein aire or plein in the auto! watercolour paintings of the River Dee. I paint on papers the same size as my plates - so that I can transfer images to plates easily. Unfortunately in this case I wasn't satisfied with either image and wanted to combine them - made more difficult because of the different sized papers.

So I used a photo to help me combine the images. I could not make a plate solely from the photo. But I could use it with my paintings to make the image I wanted.

Combining the image. In the corner you can see my Glen Banchor plate. I wanted to use the same markmaking for the distant birch trees.
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This is my Lindy cave where I make my collagraph plates - with all my stuff at easy reach. It is how I first spent some of the money I earnt from printmaking in my first pop up shop in Bruntsfield. Isnt it amazing it's called the Original Scrapbox.

The plate is ready to be "collaged"

Step 1 Liquitex varnish - the sky and the river - I will be able to wipe these areas clean, and then possibly roll over colours.  You can see the shiny areas.

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Step 2 Carborandum - the pine trees - used where I want intense colour. In this case a darker green. This is a new product for me usually I use carborandum sand and glue - so this is a bit of an experiment.

The river beaches. Haven't used this for a while.

The silver birch tree trunks - quite thickly applied should wipe really clean

I tend to use my Dremmel instead of cutting with a knife as I can get a wider range of marks. I deliniated the birch trees, made some grass and made marks for all the distant trees.

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Then I stuck some moss on to make foreground vegetation and sealed it all with one coat of shellac.
Will I be brave enough to print it tomorrow. I do enjoy making plates - the thinking about how to get different effects - however, there are a lot of possibilities for disasters!