Collograph Printing on Fabric and Paper

In January, yes as long ago as that, I went on a very enjoyable collograph course tutored by Birgitta Wilson at Committed to Cloth. I have been on collograph courses before but what I learnt from Brigitta was that by using different materials on the printing plate I could influence the tone that was printed. This increases the possibilities no end.

The image above is one of the printing plates I made, after it had been used. As with most of my work at the moment it was influenced by the salt flats in Chile. I loved the effect of the crushed egg shells and the sky was made of sellotape which produced a naturally lighter print area. This was the plate printed onto paper..

We used a limited colour palette, which helped us explore the effects the different materials could have on tone. This piece was printed on fabric and although it's not a great print, I can see that it has potential and I will probably stitch it. 

it 

I layered the plate with another smaller plate before printing, it wasn't my favourite but it seemed very popular with everyone else.

I also made two smaller plates. In fact this one was the first plate I made in class and I used a number of materials to trial the effects it would achieve.

 I printed both plates on top of each to create this image on fabric. If you concentrate hard you can see the two images (one of them is turned round). It makes me think of old map.

This is something that I would like to do more of, perhaps one day I'll own a printing press. This technique has got lots of potential which I'd love to explore more. I would definitely recommend a course with Brigitta and I see she is doing another course at C2C later in the year but I see it's already full. I'm obviously not the only one that enjoys going on her courses.