Project 13 – Print Making with Chine Collé

In this project select a mixture of techniques to create a series of prints based upon your work on a chosen personal theme.

Chine Collé is a term that derives from the French words, Chine – thin paper, (originally often imported from the Far East) and Collé – to glue.

It is a technique that allows the printmaker to add colour, text, photos, texture and pattern to their work through a process of effectively bonding an additional layer(s) between the print plate and paper.

This layer can be added to the whole print as background colour or to just chosen parts. It allows the printmaker to avoid the need to create further printing plates and is often used to add shape, depth and subtle tone, or as in the print below, highlight sections of the image and easily allow for multiple yet variable versions of each print.

Deborah Bell, Memo (Version A) http://davidkrutprojects.com/44925/subtle-differences-chine-colle [accessed 17/04/2020]

Video of Chine Collé process: http://davidkrutprojects.com/47571/technical-demonstration-deborah-bell [accessed 17/04/2020]

Naturally, this process works well in printing processes where there is place for a ‘sandwich’ layer between plate and paper, such as mono, relief and intaglio printing.

Clare Caulfield adds Chine Collé to many of her monochrome dry point prints. These papers, hand made using watercolour paints, introduce texture, colour and vibrancy to her prints.

http://clarecaulfield.co.uk/gallery#/biscuit-factory/ – A photo journal of her process for ‘The Winter Exhibition’ (November 2016)

Personal Theme: – As I’ve began this final part of the course the world has gone into ‘lockdown’ and to some extent, so is my brain! It’s difficult to apply thought to research and writing when the world is in crisis.

I have begun this project by searching for a theme in my circuits around the garden. Once decided, I have had fun with mark making, sketching and experimenting with monoprints, lino and collagraph. Plenty of ideas are flowing and at times I feel so immersed that I forget that there is fear, worry and panic outside my bubble and completely relax. There are a lots of media conversations at the moment on art therapy and I can see the angle that they are coming from. What can be more calming than sitting in the shed, listening to the radio and cutting blocks of lino or building collagraph plates.

At the end of the garden I found some logs from an old apple tree, they had very clear layers of rings and thought of ‘circles of life’ from The Lion King – Elton John / Tim Rice:

It’s the circle of life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
‘Til we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the circle
The circle of life

Some deep meanings can be gleaned from these words; however, I’m not going there and have decided to further explore the tree rings. I am missing my forest conservation work already and this seems a good way to continue to focus on trees, woodland and forest.

My start point began with some research into tree rings, firstly from a scientific point of view and then by searching for artists that used tree rings within their work:- Lorraine Roy, Marita Putetti and Bryan Nash Gill.

Research – tree rings and artists that work with them. https://billydooprint1.home.blog/research-part-5/

With this research in mind I looked more intently and closely at my chosen subjects as I took my daily exercise in the forest. In these examples there are the signs of decay, the rings are visible, their are cracks and splits and cut marks from the saw blade.

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From a different perspective I also took time to look at the ‘tree’ and pondered its purpose and what these rings of annual growth represented. In the below examples, there is shape and form as well as story and purpose.

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LO3 – Historical Context

The tall tree is grown for timber, the tree with the strange bendy branches has had an early life of coppicing. A family of bees have found a place for their nest, there is the mark* (Tree Grafitti) of someone that was in the tree at a certain point in time, why were they there, what for etc? Similarly the next mark, man made or natural and finally ‘The Kings Mark’ used to identify trees reserved for the Royal Navy, shares space with a ‘Witches Mark’ thought to ward off evil spirits. All have a story of their own that can be explored and interpreted, and with my work in forest conservation a subject that I can draw on emotively and hopefully enthuse into my work in the future.

Note – * Tree Grafitti – more professionally known as arborglyphs or dendroglyphs – the carving of shapes and symbols into the bark of living trees.

These marks give a hint of the past, tell a story and can give clues and hints as to how our forebears lived and used the area.

However as a living thing they do not hold a permanent place within our history, marks change shape and sometimes disappear as the tree grows, some are damaged by human or animals and all will eventually die and return to the earth.

I am beginning to think that this could be an interesting subject to research in its own right, to investigate and produce record within an art form the stories and actual marks that can be gleaned from these historical and even contemporary arborglyphs. Some potential ideas for the future of my work.

In this project I wanted to further explore collagraph and abstraction as I had begun to do in Part 4.

As I begun to explore the tree rings, the shape of contour lines on maps, came to mind, but I couldn’t find a way to move forward. Later during the OCA workshop I attended an idea was discussed about mapping walking routes around the trees with a GPS tracker and maybe bringing those into my work as a symbolisation of circles. After all, each walk has a start and an end point at the same point of place.

I tried charcoal and graphite rubbings of Silver Birch bark and the top of the old log, I liked the linear strafe marks of the bark and where, on the logs I had expected tree the rings, it was a mixture of rings, saw cut marks and elements of the rough texture of the wood.

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Using wire wool I made some marks on paper and then made some monoprints, applying ink with a household paint brush and wiping a plate with wire wool dipped in ink to create texture of both bark and log. Its strange to think that at the start of this course I was beating myself up for strange marks and blobs on my prints, now I think that they add something and are part of the image that I am trying to portray, the scars of nature and human intervention.

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An article on lino etching and the work of Howard Jeffs RE led me to the print Two Whirls No 3 and consequently a small collagraph plate of string was assembled and tested across the page.

https://www.re-printmakers.com/artists/82-howard-jeffs-re/works/10778/ [accessed 20/4/2020]

I now had a start point and direction; and no end goal other than to explore and create a series of prints that would could be implied in an abstract way as the marks of life and death of a tree.

The guidance notes I found somewhat confusing, how many prints? 3? 4? 7? what are the three methods used, am I missing pages. I decide that all I could do was to create some prints that show what I have learnt from this course with one combining factor, Chine Collé

Naturally, as this was the first time I had used Chine Collé in the printmaking process I’ve had some disasters.

• ink too wet / too thick
• papers unsuitable
• definition and alignment not good
• colours not working together
• too much glue / not enough glue/ glue drys to quickly
• paper curl / papers tearing while adding glue

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Some of these issues were solved by using tweezers and cocktail sticks to move the papers onto the plate and using thicker Chine Collé papers.

However, the thicker papers created further problems, they didn’t work well with the thinner print paper (Hoshu and Zerkall), causing it to buckle as it dried, even when I started to weight the paper down. My lack of paper stock (bad CV19 planning) led me to compromise and experiment to achieve a more suitable result.

Also of note, the more ink on the plate the better the adhesion of the Chine Collé, this meant that printing in intaglio was far more of a struggle than in relief.

Further research into Chine Collé – Care needs to be taken when choosing papers to be used for the ‘sandwiched’ layer and those which takes the printed image. Thin delicate paper allows prints to be made on delicate surfaces, while those surfaces that are thicker can withstand the heavier addition of photos and newsprint.

Review:

In this series of prints I have used different papers on which to print and a variety of papers and fabric for my Chine Collé additions. I hope that for all my effort I have referenced and applied some of my research and emotions of discovery into each print.

The Fabriano paper worked well with the heaviness of the black relief circles, running my fingers over the surface I wonder if a person with visual impairment would be able to feel and recognise the bumps and lumps of the structure left by the string relief.

In contrast, after several attempts and a compromise to work with lighter papers the Hoshu paper has worked well and created a contrasting silky translucency to that of the two previous prints.

For prints 1 and / or 2, I would have liked to have covered at least one whole plate (for emphasis) in a layer of orange tissue, I felt it added a boldness to the print. But try as I might I couldn’t accurately place the papers, as can be seen in one of my failed attempts above. The paper stretched, curled, creased and wouldn’t lay where I wanted it to; maybe as standard ‘from the village shop’ tissue paper it was just too thin to cope with my demands.

After my discovery of the zingy effects of adding the Japanese gold paper, I tried to add copper leaf, as suggested in the course notes! There has to be a serious technique to glueing this stuff that I couldn’t find. All I ended up with was minute pieces of leaf everywhere, and I mean everywhere. A shame, but something to put on the back burner for further investigation, along with my tree graffiti and GPS recording.