First of all, I did three prints onto plain A4 paper, and then moved onto using my prepared paper that I worked on earlier in the week. I had only used a few different basic colours when working on these sheets, but most of the paper either had patterns already on them (wallpaper with flowery designs) or some other rich texture that I thought would be interesting. Due to the design of my plate, some of the intricacies of the papers own patterns were not clear in the print itself, covered by the black ink. Less of a problem after the print had been run a few times without being refreshed, as the ink began to thin.
The results were a little better on the sheets that had simpler or lighter colour works on them, and I ended up trimming a lot of them down to size to better match the print itself, as the plate had a border of about 2 or 3 inches, which I liked but definitely affects the way the print looks when it's sat in the middle of a piece of A3 paper. I did probably 10 or so of these prints.
Later in the afternoon we moved on to collograph prints, using the plates we had made (most of us having done them the night before, myself included). I had originally attempted to make my plate earlier in the week, but ended up spoiling the card and having to start again. I used a simple combination of a kind of thick gauze, about 2 inches square and frayed around the edges, and lengths of elastic bands that I had cut to size and laid out as carefully as possible. The result worked surprisingly well - I wasn't sure if the PVA glue would hold the materials in place but for the most part they stayed secure, with only some parts of the elastic coming loose towards the end of the session, particularly during cleaning.
Cleaning involved a lot of turps and a lot of scrubbing, and then further scrubbing with paper towels, and also tufanega (swarfega) followed by yet more scrubbing. Oil based inks/paints are definitely more awkward to clean, but I am pretty convinced that I prefer them to water based paints, at least if I had to choose anyway. At school I was fortunate enough to have access to oil paints and I much preferred working with them over acrylics. The persistent fluidity that comes with oils feels more organic and unpredictable in some ways. Acrylics dry quickly, which can be useful but there is a different textural quality that doesn't appeal to me as much. I will have to grow accustomed to the mess of oils again.
