Printmaking Books

Some scans from a book that I recently had delivered to me by the Fife housebound library service. They come every 3 weeks and they also delivered another book which I had been trying to get hold of for the past 2 or 3 years. The edition had sold out. That was "Chine Colle" by Brian Shure which I am afraid was rather a disappointment and didn't tell me anything that I did'nt already know.......... bah. I mean it was not experimental in any way nor instructive. Basically you had printmaking onto a piece of lightweight paper the same size as your plate, and onto silk and how to make wheat paste. Oh and if using wheat paste you can pre-paste them, and then like stamps or envelope edges when you wet it it will stick to the paper - that actually could be quite useful if one were doing a large print with a large area of chine colle. i will have to see if that works in a similar way for rice paste which is what I use. I get it from Intaglio Printmakers in London. I empty it out into a glass jar so that I can see how much I am putting on my brush as if you use it from the tube you can tend to 'overuse' it and then become vulnerbale to having it slide as it goes through the press. Although if anything nowadays I am more inclined to under rather than over-paste !!.

Getting back to what I was saying about Brian's book - I suppose it's just that if I researched and authored a book on the uses of chine colle for printmakers - I would be endeavoring to offer a greater range of examples/ have it more up to date ( there was no mention of using inkjet at all, and this a book published in 2000) and for the publication to be inspiring.

Now both these books were brought to me by the mobile library on the same day and I would say that this book "Collagraph Printmaking" by Mary Ann Wenniger, originally published in 1981 was more useful and enlightening even though the photos were mainly in black and white. Very practical and instructive.
I mentioned this technique I read about in it which involved putting your plate into the freezer, to Jane Marshall when we were at the studio last week and here it is.

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