Collagraphs

Here are the latest results of my adventures into the world of collagraphs.  For Tea Train,  I used a real doily and I wasn't sure if it would if it would work because it is so bumpy, but I quite like the effect.  I am in love with low tech gadgets and fanciful mechanical contraptions with wheels.  Don't get me wrong, I also love my touch screen phone, but I'm also nostalgiac for the days when you could actually fix things yourself.  I remember having an old car that I had to start on cold days by inserting a pen into some part of the engine, the carburetor, I think.  That car was so hudge, my friend called it a "land barge".  I won't start making calligraphs of vintage cars, but I'll make my own  inventions that perhaps in my imagination, I could fix if they broke. 

I'm finding that hand-colouring these prints really alters the overall effect and I love the possibilites.   There is much more ink on the print below, and I thought it looked much stormier than the one shown in my previous blog post.  To this one, I added a little gold leaf on the anchor.  I'm going to experiment further with gold leaf.

Both of these prints look better in real life, so I'm going to have to work on my photography skills.  If anyone has any ideas about how to photograph prints with lots of black and white so that they don't look like photocopies please let me know!
They're both now listed in my shop : )