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