The Chine Collé Woes™ continue. My goal is to add some flowers to my skull drypoint print. I decided to try making my own paper to use for chine collé. For my first attempt last week, I drew the flowers on some Sumi-e paper with colored pencils. I printed that one in class with Nori paste and it came out okay-ish. Some of the flowers didn’t really print well and the Nori paste needed to be diluted a bit, it was a bit lumpy which you can see in the print. I do like the way the black ink bled a bit into the paper.
Yesterday I decided to print the flowers on some mulberry paper I found in my stash. I cut 2 pieces and printed one on my Canon inkjet printer and the other on my laser printer. I started with the inkjet printed piece. I mixed up some wheat paste and coated the back of the mulberry paper. Immediately I could see the inks starting to bleed a bit. I let the glue dry while I soaked some printmaking paper and inked the plate. Oof, that print did not turn out well. There were several problems in addition to the flowers bleeding, the print is very light and there are a lot ripples in the mulberry paper. I guess there wasn’t enough pressure on the press.
I tried using the dry wheat paste method on the next print using the laser printed mulberry paper. I used a folded square of new tarlatan and a jar to make a shaker. After inking the plate, I placed the mulberry paper face-down on the plate and sprinked the wheat starch on the back of paper. I then sprayed a light mist of water over it before laying the damp Rives paper on top and running it all through the press. When I started to pull the print, it was obvious the mulberry paper had not adhered to the printmaking paper at all. I cranked down the pressure a bit more and ran it all through the press a couple more times. The resulting print is not bad. The flowers remained crisp, but the print itself isn’t black enough. And it did not stick to the paper at all!
So, does it need more starch? Do I need to dampen the mulberry paper before I shake the starch on to it? Will the laser printed flowers bleed if I dampen the paper?
All these questions and more will be answered in the next episode of “As The Press Wheel Turns”
