Among other things..........I have been working on larger prints that don't quite meet my standards although they were mostly finished up to a point at one time in their 'lives'. One of these was a collagraph print. I have about 5 proofs of it and it seems a shame for them to be just sitting there in the plan chest in a state of incompleteness. Its a print that was made during a rurally based, printmaking residency. It came about after I had encountered a sheep that was stuck on the ground where a gate had fallen on top of it. I tried to get someone to come and deal with it and they freed it and it was alright - none the worse for wear, surprisingly. Here is the print............I think I was never really happy with the 'bear' or generalized creature (or whatever) that was in those 4 squares, on the left.
So I was thinking about what else I could do with it. Of course at first I was thinking new bear new bear..........so I had a look around and came up with this one .......
So I worked on it a little and was even prepping it as a positive for a photo etch..........but then thought NO NO NO.
I was thinking no I want to make THIS bear, this new one as a unique etching, in itself. And anyway after trying out a mock-up in Photoshop - I did'nt feel it would actually work out satisfactorily.
So I went back to the drawing board which involved thinking a little bit beyond the immediate and the obvious........well that's what I was thinking to myself . What if I placed some kind of transparent / translucent chine colle paper onto the creature and then kind of.........well I wasn't too sure (what?) beyond that.............. but I thought I'd try it out anyway.
OK......... the photo- mock up does'nt look as good as the actual effect of placing the paper I had, on top of the critter, but I did like how it looked. So now I am thinking what I will place on top of it. Also I have several kinds of pale natural colored Japanese papers and I will select the one that works best.
So the next thing I was'nt happy with, was that patch on the top right hand side of the print - that's a difficult one to 'patch up' so to speak. Well I was thinking of maybe scanning in directly from the print itself. Like directly below the area that needs working on, that centre right area of the print. Then if I can get it to print out in a satisfactorily matching color, I can chine-colle that onto the print with a plate over it.
and then the question - what to print over that area? It needs to be light and fine lined so as not to have too much 'weight' visually. Well I am still at the stage of working that one out, at the moment.
we shall see ...............we shall see.