One plate: many prints
One plate can produce so many totally different prints, and this is particularly true of carborundum.
I was struck by this on the carborundum printing course I ran last week, because we deliberately separated, and then combined different inking techniques and this emphasised the amazing variety of images you can achieve from one easy simple plate.
In this blog post I want to share this process of discovery with you, and I am grateful to my students for letting me use some of their many fantastic prints as examples.
Back to basics
Sometimes it is good to go back to basics to unpick just how different platemaking materials interact and behave when you ink them. So whether you are an old hand with carborundum printing, or it is a new area for you I hope this will give you food for thought and something to experiment with.
Make a quick carborundum plate
My two sample plates are made with mountboard, carborundum paint and shiny card or aluminium tape.
Starting with a piece of mountboard I roughly spread some carborundum paint on using a palette knife – just as you would do with chocolate spread. Nice and thick!
I left an area of plain card round the edge to make a contrasting texture.
Once the carborundum paint had dried, I made a recessed circle on one plate by cutting out and removing the shape, and then sticking a piece of aluminium tape in to create a smooth shiny surface.
The other plate had a circle of shiny coated card stuck on top of the carborundum paint.
There is no need to seal the plates – once everything is stuck down you are ready to print.
Different textures
These quick and simple plates each contain three different textures;
- smooth and shiny; the circles
- medium rough; the bare mountboard at the edge
- very rough; the carborundum paint
Different levels
The larger shiny circles is raised up above the painted surface and the smaller one is low, sitting beneath the painted surface.
The roughly applied carborundum paint also has different levels to its surface.
Print your carborundum plate in relief
Ink up a roller – not too much ink – and just roll. With relief inking the rough areas print light and the smooth areas print dark.
I printed the plates on damp paper in an etching press.
Print your carborundum plate as intaglio
Don’t worry about cleaning the plates – just go right on and ink them up as intaglio in a different colour. This is cobalt, and it will change a bit as there is still some yellow left from the relief inking.
(For general info on intaglio inking process see this post.)
Carborundum is gritty so it will hold a lot of ink – it can take a few goes before you get the hang of inking and wiping it. Add some oil to the ink to make it fairly runny, paint it on with a brush, working it into the texture, then wipe the excess off with a rag, finishing with newspaper wipes. You will not be able to remove the ink so don’t try too hard – it is fine to leave a good amount in the carborundum so it prints nice and strong.
You will need to give the medium rough and smooth shiny areas a bit more attention – they can be wiped clean of ink to give a good contrast with the dark carborundum.
These prints are the tonal reverse of the relief prints. The rough areas are dark and the smooth areas are light.
Print the carborundum plates in relief and intaglio at one go
You are no doubt ahead of me here… re-ink the plate as intaglio to get a good colour on it and wipe the ink from the top surfaces. Then, in a contrasting colour, roll a layer of relief ink over it as before.
If you want to have some white areas (a good idea I think) don’t press too hard with the roller.
It can be hard to explain this effect in words – much easier to look at a print and work out what happened!
Ghost prints
After a few times inking up the carborundum will be saturated with ink and you can take ghost prints from the plate. This means just running it through the press a second time without re-inking it, for a paler print. You can always give it a relief roll to brighten up the top colour before doing this.
The next image shows a ghost print (paler blue) with a new yellow relief layer added.
The plate improves
As you make more prints, changing the colours and allowing them to mix a bit, you will get more and more interesting images and subtle colours from your simple carborundum plates.
Inspiration
Here are some more prints from the carborundum course, exploring combinations of relief and intaglio inking by Chloe and Jane Thompson and Maggie Edwards.
The plates for these were made with PVA glue and carborundum powder, wet and dry sandpaper as well as carborundum paint, for the rough textures and aluminium foil and acrylic gels for the light areas.
Be confident with carborundum
I hope this has prompted you to feel more confident with carborundum, and consider it as one of your friends when constructing your collagraph plates. Along with aluminium foil, it will help you create a good range of textured surfaces to produce interesting areas of light and dark, whichever way you decide to print them.
Surprise yourself
Because smooth and rough produce opposite effects depending on the inking method planning can be tricky, so I’d suggest you make life easy and don’t plan in too much detail. Allow yourself to be surprised as you get to know your plates and enjoy the way the colours evolve and change.
12 thoughts on “Printing carborundum plates in relief and intaglio”
Thank you for sharing, I really enjoyed this lesson. Although I am elbow-deep in work, this makes me want to experiment and play around with prints right now =)
I hope you make some time to play soon!
Dear Emily, I’d love to give carborundum prints a try after reading your blog and looking at all the fantastic and interesting work produced.
Please can you advise on carborundum “paint” – do I have to buy powder and mix or is it available as paint? I did a quick Google search but only came up with powder.
Many thanks for advice. Jo
Hi Jo
You can buy acrylic carborundum paint from on-line art suppliers Jacksons – there is some info in this blog post; https://thecuriousprintmaker.co.uk/carborundum-paint/
It is great stuff and much easier to use than the powder, although powder is the traditional method.
You can also get ‘micaceous oxide’ from art shops which is a gritty paint, nice to use but very expensive.
Good luck with your experiments
Thanks Emily. Can’t wait to get started!
Hi Emily , is it possible to remove carbonundrum from a collograph plate once it has dried. I used the powder, it has pretty much ruined my piece. I could start afresh and try to make a new plate but wondered if first I could try removing the carbonundrum? Thanks for all the handy tips
If the carborundum was stuck with pva it is pretty permanent and I think trying to get it back to how it was ‘before carborundum’ would be very difficult. Depending on the design and what your plate is made of you could cut that area out and re-do it. Otherwise it is probably best to re-make the plate, this is something I do quite frequently, it is interesting to actually see how much you learn from doing this!
Great site with so much inspiration! 🙂
I wonder if I should seal my carborundum plate if the plate material feels a bit porous? Will it affect how the carborundum areas print? Or should I leave the carborundum areas rough and unsealed? If sealing is best would you recommend shellak or mat medium?
Hi Malene, thanks for your question.
if you have sprinkled carborundum powder onto glue it can seem a bit dusty – I would brush off as much loose dust as you can and then seal it with shellac. Try not to have the shellac too thick – you want to keep all the lovely texture of the carborundum, but a thin coat will help to stick it all together. (dilute shellac with methylated spirits if needed) This doesn’t affect how th carborundum prints.
you can also print it without sealing and after a few times the loose dust will be wiped away, but I think it is easier to seal it.
Thank you so much, Emily! I will try that.
Hello
thanks for your interesting post.
Could you give me an idea of how long carborundum takes to dry – to be ready for printing? Do you think I could make a plate and do a print in 1.5 hrs?
I’d say it depends on the form of carborundum you are using and how thick you have the glue and carborundum.
I often use carborundum acrylic paint (Ara brand) you can get this from Jacksons, this dries quickly, and needs no sealing, so you could use it within your 1.5 hrs as long as you dont get big blobs of it!
If you are painting pva on the plate and sprinkling carborundum powder on it can get quite thick so may be hard to do the whole process of making a plate and printing it within the time, especially if you need to seal it with shellac as well.
Another alternative is to stick carborundum paper on the plate using double sided tape – you can ink this up immediately so no worries about drying times.