Dry point

Whale in drypoint and chine colle x4 by Hannah Foley. All igths reserved (www.owlingabout.co.uk)Do you remember me mentioning the Devon-based artist Lynn Bailey back in 2015? I saw her work at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen gallery in Bovey Tracey and loved it. On Saturday I was lucky enough to attend a printmaking workshop she was running on dry point and chine colle. For those of you who don’t know, dry point is the process by which you scratch an image into a metal or plastic plate using sharp implements (and power-tools in Lynn’s case!). You then ink the plate up and run it through your printing press in the normal way.

I have always been very bad at it. My natural tendency is for the flowing lines you get with ink work. I love the variety you can achieve within one stroke with a dip pen. Dry point is my polar opposite. But sometimes it’s great to challenge yourself, and Lynn’s work is full of life and flow, so I signed up and had a marvelous time. I worked on this whale character here and you can see me trying out all sorts of different things. The chine colle process is a way of adding colour using very thin tissue paper and kind of embossing it into the print as you print the plate. It was great and lots of food for creative thought!

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