Techniques

All my etchings and collagraphs are original prints. Original Print is a special class of image where the artist has made the plates, blocks or screens themselves and printed them by hand with one of the traditional presses or hand processes. Editions are limited and should not exceed 150.

They are never reproductions of previous paintings or other artworks. None of my prints exist in any other format or other than at the plate size stated.

My own editions are quite small. The collagraphs number 15 to 30 usually and most of the etchings 50 or fewer. These limits are determined by when the plates start to wear through the demands of the printing process.

Etchings are printed from copper plates (sometimes zinc) into which I have drawn and bitten the design with acid. The processes are very traditional ones going back as far as 400 years using wax resist and resinous layers to control the action of the acid on the plates.

When the plates have gone through the acid lines and marks have been incised into the plate. Ink is then wiped across the plate and into these lines. The polished surface of the plate is then wiped clean leaving ink only in the lines. The plate is next put onto the bed of the press; damped paper is placed on top and then the whole is rolled through between steel rollers under pressures of several tons. This forces the paper into the etched marks in the plate and the ink is transferred and the print made.

Methods of biting a plate to hold ink across wide areas rather than lines and marks can be used creating tonal prints called aquatint etching. I often use a second plate with this method to create patches of colour over which my first needled line plate is printed to make a multi-coloured etching.

This means that etching is one of the INTAGLIO family of print making. It is the opposite of relief printing where the ink is rolled onto the surface of a block (typically lino). This enables me to create effects from very fine lines and marks and extremely delicate tonal effects too.

My collagraphs are made the opposite way to etchings in that I build up a collage from all sorts of textured surfaces stuck on a board. This is then varnished and sealed so that it can be inked, wiped and printed as if it were an etching plate.

These create more richly inked, very tactile and sculptural images. They are still intaglio prints in that the image is taken from the recesses made by the elements of the collaged plate. But because the recesses in the plate are so deep compared with an etching lots of other painterly tricks and effects can be achieved.

Some people call this sort of work "Experimental Printmaking" because it is very new in the history of art and there aren't many rules yet! My own plates may include embossed wallpaper, packaging plastic, sandpaper and acrylic modeling pastes as well as the more usual art papers and tissues.

All my works are printed by hand using a Bewick and Wilson 24 inch etching press in my studio in Norwich. The papers used are 100% cotton rag from the Somerset and Arches mills in England and France.

Bewick and Wilson 24 inch etching press
Copper Plate Etching Aquatint Etching Plate on the Printing Press Collagraph Plate on the Printing Press Printing Studio