Collagraph: "Raven"

I just wrapped up a four day, four week, collagraph workshop at Josephine Press. You can see examples of some of my student's work on the JP blog, here. Collagraphs are pretty fun, especially for someone new to printmaking. The plates are made out of all manner of stuff, much of it just garbage, and all glued down to a simple, cheap substrate like chipboard. I tore the back off an old calendar for this one. After gluing all the pieces down to the substrate, the plate is sealed with a couple of layers of acrylic medium to protect it from the ink and solvents applied to it. I made two demo prints for the class. The first was a little house print, and the second was this raven collagraph. The plate is made with modeling past on a chipboard substrate. I cut the chipboard to the shape of the raven and then messed around with acrylic modeling paste to get the feathers and other features of the bird. Below are two prints, the the raven printed in conjunction with another plate, and then the ghost print of just the raven.