I’m writing about this in retrospect so I hope this all make sense! I started by looking for objects to stick down for printing my collage. I realised some of the objects I’d chosen were going to stand out to tall so reject those in favor of having a more even height of objects and hopefully an even print.

Picking materials for collage .

I went for A3 sized thick cardboard as the backing for my collage, and divided it into 16 sections:

Marking out sections on cardboard.

I wanted to create a fun collage with a little bit of character so I stuck down things that I liked/were fun to me, rather than just purely random objects. I collect lots of objects like buttons, belt buckles, papers and fabrics because I like texture. So I included some of these in the block.

Collage Block before printing

Close up of Collage block

Another close up of the block

Inking too a little bit longer than normal as I was trying to ink to evenly cover over the different objects, the fabric probably took the longest to pick up the ink.

Collage block after inking

I found that I had some cotton water colour paper this seemed a suitable paper to soak and then blot for printing. I soaked the paper for a couple of hours, then blotted it dry with newsprint. I chose to do the first set of prints as black and white, just to see how it worked. Below is the first print which worked fairly well, there’s a little bit of blurring but otherwise I think it’s a decent print.

First print – on cotton watercolor/rag paper

I then wanted to try printing on a thinner paper, so took some cheap cartridge paper I had and lightly dampened it with a sponge before blotting it off.

Second print on Cartridge paper

Third print on cartridge paper.

It’s interesting that not as much ink has been picked up on the prints on the cartridge paper but the print is probably a little crisper/cleaner? Not quite sure why that is though.

Having done these three prints in black ink I coated the whole ting with pva glue again to seal it so I could try a colour version…