Collograph

We have been working with collograph for the last two weeks and those of you who know what collograph is will know how frustrating and dissapointing collograph can be! For those of you who don't know what it is: you make boards from thin wood or cardboard with layers and textures made from acrylic paint, tile adhesive, pva glue, ribbon, or if you're me - teabags!! The point is to create places on the boards for ink to 'grab onto' so that when you run the boards through the press the most textured areas leave the heaviest amount of ink... does any of that make sense? Probably not but when I'm finished I'll put up some pics of my collograph boards and it might help to explain!
For now I just have one or two images to show you of the kind of thing I've been doing.

This is my pile of teabags that have been sitting on the radiator, drying, for about a week now. I've been looking at the patters and stains left behind when they have been used and left to dry. They look like maps to me.

This is a drypoint etching of one of my 'teabag maps'. I plan to print these over some collograph/monoprints that I finished on Friday.

This is a terrible (and sideways) pic of one of my favourite collographs. The square at the bottom is tile adhesive, then carborundum and pva glue with the back of a piece of board printed over it, then a 'teabag map' etching at the top.

This is a triptych of tealeaf readings. No I can't read much into them either...

Thats all for now, big 'Hello!' to Alan (whom Daddy informs me reads my blog!) and to anyone else out there reading this, although I really don't understand why you would be - have you nothing better to do?!

Keep in mind people (my imaginary blog readers) that all my prints are for sale at the end of the college year so let me know if you see anything you fancy.