Expansive Landscapes | Collagraph Printmaking At Home for Beginners

1. Introduction - Hey there!: Hello and welcome back to collagraph class. This time we are diving in to Expansive Landscapes. I just cannot tell you how exciting this is... but I guess, yes I can, okay, let's try! Collagraph printmaking is a really fun and easy way to create art. You can do it at home. It combines collage and printmaking. Yes, in this class, we are going to make our own landscape collage made from bits and bobs that we find around the house. We're going to turn it into our own collagraph plate, which we can take prints from again and again and again. We will be taking inspiration from landscape photographs and interpreting them through textures to create our own unique prints. Landscapes surround us, inspire us, and are filled to the brim with texture. How exciting then, to be able to create our own arty landscapes with just as much texture. Building a collagraph plate feels, to me, a bit like sculpting - and feeling a landscape grow and expand under my hands, upwards and outwards, is super satisfying! I am so excited to be your art buddy today, helping you to explore these new techniques and encouraging you to know that you can do it! My name is Gemma and I'm so happy to be your collagraph guide today. I'm an artist-maker, and I love to make lots of things in lots of ways. I believe that learning lots of different techniques and tools throughout your arty practice helps us to problem-solve creatively and expands our opportunities. From making puppets and props to exploring printmaking and surface design, I have been on my own artistic adventure for a good while now. And I can vouch for the fact that everything you learn leads to new thoughts, new ideas, and new creative excitements. My online home is gemmathepen.com, where you can find my blog, my Instagram link, my shops, and links to my YouTube channel where I create free arty videos. If you're in my corner of the Internet at anytime, please do pop by, say Hi! So are you ready to collagraph? Mmm-hmm-hmmm? Let's get started! 2. The Project - What are we making?: First, we need to grab a photo of a landscape to work from. Of course, if you'd like to create your own freestyle imaginary landscape, then please do. And also please share that with us because I want to see what is in that creative brain of yours! I'll be using a photo as a jumping off point in this class. And I encourage you to do the same if you're new to collagraph and not quite sure. I'm also providing ready-made templates in the resources section. So please feel free to use those if you want to get stuck in straight away. Step two is building our collagraph plate. Plate is a printmaking term, that just means - the thing that you're going to put your design on and then you'll print from later. Yeah, that's the official definition. Essentially, we're going to create a collage and then we'll cover it in some gloopy goop, which will make it printable. Step three, we'll take a print - or lots of prints! - from our plate. It's important to remember that printmaking is a lot about the process. Although the actual printing at the end can feel speedy, often the "getting there" preparation stages can feel slower. That is part of the joy and the part that I encourage you to embrace. Give yourself permission to take your time and enjoy your time. Remember, there is also a step-by-step guide included in the resources. So as you're going along, if you need a little top-up refresher of what you need to do, you can always keep that handy. So now we need materials. Let's go gathering! 3. Design Materials - The stuff to build a plate with!: So let's run over a few of the things that we're going to need first, on this collagraph adventure. Psst! There is a materials PDF that you can find in the resources section, that lists everything that we're going to talk about. Remember that the Skillshare app does not show you the resources section. If you'd like to find it head on over to your browser version. It's easiest to break our materials list into sections: design and printing. So let's start with our design section. For your base plate, you'll need a piece of thick, sturdy cardboard. This can be an off cut from an old corrugated cardboard box or a piece of gray board ripped from the back of an old Sketchpad. As long as it's flat with no bends in it, you are good to go! You'll need a pencil to sketch out your design. A pair of scissors and possibly a craft knife, depending on the materials that you decide to use in your design. Have a bottle of PVA glue on hand to stick down all of your elements, along with a brush or a spreader for applying it with. Now, this is the adventurous part where you can get a bit experimental should you wish, because the materials that you use to build your collage can be almost anything. I say almost because there's a couple of things that you should probably think about, but we'll talk about those in just a moment. But I challenge you to, before buying anything specific to build your college with, take a look around, see what you already have that you can use for free. Here are a few ideas to get you started... Okay, so here's a little disclaimer. There are a couple of things to bear in mind or to avoid when choosing your materials: steer clear of living things or things with moisture in them. This means if you use anything from the garden, makes sure you dry them out first. And if you use any food products make sure that they are of a dry kind, such as rice, grains and pasta. Anything that holds moisture may be liable to squish under pressure and could go moldy inside your plate later on. Urgh! Also, avoid sharp metal things like nails and screws. Under pressure, later on, you might find that they rip your paper or perhaps hurt your hands. And that's no fun! Later on, we'll talk about the materials that we'll need to print with. But for now, let's get building! 4. Prepping the Plate - Things to think about...: Okay, let's get building our plate. So this is the plate. It's just a piece of cardboard and it's cut to about A4 size. I would say, don't go any bigger than A4, just while you're learning this process, as you need to bear in mind that the size of the plate needs to fit onto the size of the paper that you'll print onto later. A4 is the common paper size in the UK, or probably 8 by 11 inches is the letter size in the US. So those size of papers are easiest to get hold of. And so fitting your plate to suit that size is a good idea. Of course, you can create plates as big as you like, but if you don't have the paper to print them on, it can get a little tricky. So I would suggest, while you're starting out, to keep it to the standard size. You can also, of course, go smaller than this. But because we are exploring expansive landscapes, I'd like to encourage you to give yourself space to have a play. I'm going to use as a reference, one of my own templates. These templates are available in the resources section to download if you'd like to use them - just to make it easy to make a start. All of these images are traced from my own holiday photos. I'm going to use this lighthouse one for this project. First, we need to transfer this design on to the Backboard. You can draw this freehand if you like, but I'm going to trace it. I'm tracing with tracing paper and a soft pencil, then flipping it over and redrawing back over it, so it leaves a faint impression of the design on the backing board. If you'd like to see this tracing technique in a little bit more detail, checkout Lesson Six in my other class, Characters in Collagraph. This tracing method is handy because it automatically reverses my design onto the board. This is good because when you get to printing the plate later, the print will go back to being the right way around. Remember this, especially if you are drawing a freehand design directly onto the board. Your print image will always be a reverse of your plate image. With our design ready to go, we can start sticking things on straight away if we want. But just before we do, I'm going to show you how we can have a little think about where we want the design to go. We're going to have a little doodle on our original drawing or design. If it's on a piece of paper, great, use a pencil. If you've got it on a digital application, such as Procreate on an iPad, then you can do it on a fresh layer on there. But this is a good way of trying out different shapes and thoughts about where you might take this design. And it will help you to identify the textures that you need and the materials that you need in order to create those shapes. What I mean by this is, take sections of your image and have a think. This area here is a big cloud in the sky, and I'd quite like it to be a feature of this design. So I think I'd like it to involve, say, swirls. So I'm just going to have a little play with doodling some swirls, just to get an idea of the type of feeling that I want. Maybe I want tight little swirls like this, or maybe I want big ones like this. Whatever I want, I can play around, see what takes my fancy. And as I do so, I can think about the type of textual material which could help me to create this result. So this could be created perhaps by wool or string, because those are bendy, loopy materials which can create swirly shapes. Also, another great thing to think about as you plan, is to leave some areas with less impact than others. What I mean by this is that, if we have this massive swirly cloud, which is going to be quite textured and dense... If we then also have a large sky area all around it, which is also heavily textured, then we're going to lose the impact of that cloud and it's all going to seem a little bit much for the eye to take in. So, in thinking about the sky around the textured cloud, I'm thinking I'll use something light, like tinfoil perhaps, which will pick up tiny flecks of texture, but not be something structured that would distract from the cloud. You can do this with any other parts of the picture too. In looking at the boulders here, you might think, okay, I want those to be stripy. Try it out, see whether that design idea feels like you. And if it does, think about how you might create that texture later. So enough of the planning. Let's just start playing! 5. Building the Plate - Let's stick some stuff!: I've decided to use tinfoil for the sky area. Tinfoil is a nice flat texture, so I'm going to stick that on first because I can easily build other materials on top of it or around it. The lovely thing about foil is that you can scrunch it and very carefully tease it back out. Again, don't worry if you rip bits, this often happens, but you can still use all of the little bits. It will give your prints a lovely texture. In terms of how you lay the tinfoil down on your plate, you don't have to get too technical to find your shapes. Here. I'm just laying the edge against my lighthouse and then I'm going to use my fingers and roughly tear away the general shape that I want. Absolutely not scientific at all. If you wanted, you could even put glue down first and then just rip away the parts that weren't glued. Do not be shy with your glue. You can't really have too much. It will all dry clear anyway, so you don't have to worry. You can either stick a full sheet of tinfoil on and tear away the excess bits you don't need. Or you could rip up tiny bits and build them up into the larger area that you want. It's entirely up to you. You stick them on however you want to stick them on! Remember, this background texture is just that. It's the background. It's not meant to be hugely impactful and you don't need to worry about it being perfect. Look at these edges. They're not particularly exact around my lighthouse. It doesn't matter because I'm going to be building the lighthouse separately on top of it. So we don't need to worry. We can just enjoy laying down shapes, fitting on textures, and seeing what happens. When I look at this image, I think there are three main areas for me to focus on. The clouds, the lighthouse, and the boulders. Everything else can get a little scrappy or it can get muted down with less texture if we like. These three main areas are also very helpful for me in this composition. Because the clouds do not touch the boulders. And even when they touch a tiny piece of the lighthouse, generally, the lighthouse stands alone. We have three separate sections which can have bold, impactful textures, but they are not all in competition with each other next to each other. I'm focusing next on the lighthouse. I want it to be impactful but quite simple. So I'm going to use a piece of gray board. If you have used tracing paper at any point to transfer your design, you can make use of it again here to help create specific shapes needed for your plates. I'm using a cutting mat and I'm going to cut it out with a craft knife. Be careful of your fingers if you're cutting out small pieces with your knife. I now have pieces of a lighthouse to stick on. A piece that I cut out of the door, I can use a window in the center section. I'm leaving the center as a hollow so that it can easily contrast with the top and the bottom sections. During printing, as a hollow it will not catch any ink. And even if it does the paper will likely not reached down into it, so that section will remain the colour of the paper. I'm using dried grass stems to hint at the grated window. As you can see, it's not perfect, but it doesn't have to be. This is a handy moment to talk about plate heights. This is the view of my plate from above, but this, while simplified, is the view of my plate from the side. It's important to keep this view in mind as you build because it will affect your print later. This green line is me adding my tin foil layer. The yellow is the lighthouse, which is thicker or taller than the foil. When I come to add my clouds, in pink here, I'll be trying to keep them roughly to a similar height as the lighthouse. As you can see, as you build, you create valleys in your design. The deeper those valleys are, the harder it will be for the paper to reach them during printing. As the paper presses down, it will bend into the crevices, but the less it has to bend, the easier and more detailed your print will be. Let's make some clouds. I have some woo,. so let's see what we can do. Coiling is a great technique to use. I'm grabbing an end between my fingers and wrapping the wool around it to create a coil. Once it gets bigger, it's a bit harder to hold, so that's the time to stick it down. I stick the center onto the glue and can always wrap around it directly sticking as I go if I want a really big swirl. My sky is done. I have my lighthouse sorted and there's some big areas which have been covered now. Now we have the boulders and ground area left to do. On the original picture. there were small houses in this corner, but I'm going to leave those out. I don't think we need them and I think they'll get lost amid the other textures anyway. On to the boulders! I found this old sandpaper. I'm going to cut random pieces out and hopefully they'll give me a nice rocky texture later. You could be precise and cut shapes like we did with the lighthouse. Or you can be free and easy with it. I'm roughly guessing size and shape by eye, but not being too fussy about it. At first I'm not sticking them, I'm just laying them down to get an idea of where they might look good. Once I have a few, I start sticking them, sticking the furthest away boulders down first so that the foremost boulders can be stuck to overlap them. Remember, you can rip sandpaper as well as cut. So if you want some more rougher edges, tearing the paper works really nicely. Having made our boulders, all that's left is the groundwork. I'm going to use trusty tissue paper. And yes, this is very bright! Remember, the colours of the materials that you're creating with, they don't need to match. Of course, if you want to make it intentionally aesthetic, then do so. But to be honest, even if you do this very randomly using whatever you have to hand, you'll be amazed at how stunning your plate will look, just from being an amalgamation of so many different things. I'm using a piece of tissue that is larger than the area I intend to cover. It doesn't need to be the right shape because we'll be squishing it into place. I'm using plenty of glue. Time to be a little bit brave and plop it on! But immediately start moving it. As you go, push upwards, downwards, tearing it as you need to, just feeling your way. Now, I go back in with smaller, more intentional pieces to enhance certain areas. I'm adding small pieces into the boulders to just to integrate them together. If you put another layer of tissue on top of the tissue paper, use less glue the second time, adding it as you go and when you need it. I'm trying for a wavy feel to mimic the clouds above a little bit. To neaten the edges of the plate, snip off any straggly bits with some scissors. Hurrah! Our plate is finished. Oh I just love looking at them when they are at this stage! It's so pretty and yet it's completely random, just using bits and bobs. It just looks a beauty! Please do take a photo of your plate at this stage because it will never look like this again! As soon as you start sealing it and printing it later, it will never look this pretty. So do make sure you take a photo of it and if you'd like, please do share it in the project gallery because I'd love to see it. Now we just need to give it a little rest and let it fully dry before we start the sealing. 6. Print Materials - The stuff we need next...: For the next half of your project, you'll need these materials... To seal your plate you'll need something like Button Polish or French Polish. If it has shellac in it, it will work fine. You could alternatively use a glossy artist varnish if you have it. Have an old brush on hand to apply it with too. Next, you'll need some printing ink. I'm using Essdee water-based inks because they're easy to clean. But you can also use oil-based inks if you like. Also have a few bristly brushes nearby for applying these inks with. Have some water to hand. I have it in a bottle, but you can also just pop it in a bowl nearby. Grab a clean sponge with at least one soft side. The best collagraph prints tend to be achieved with thinner papers, because they can bend around the textures of the plate easier. This is mulberry paper, which works really well. But if you cannot get hold of some, you can still make a start using a standard printer paper. Have some random paper anyway to hand, just for any test prints that you want to try, and have something like kitchen roll handy for wiping ink away. If you have cotton buds, these can also be used for tidying up Inky patches, but they're completely optional. Okay, Let's get sealing! 7. Sealing the Plate - Making it shiny!: Right, now this is all dry and lovely, we need to start sealing it. Why do we seal it? Because if we were to just put ink straight onto the top of this, the ink would sink into these softer textures and we wouldn't be able to transfer that ink as easily onto a piece of paper. So by sealing it, we create a shiny surface, which then, when paper and ink is pressed on it, when the paper is pulled up, ink comes with it. So I have button polish. You can also use French polish, whatever you would like. Make sure to keep a well ventilated space when you're doing this. And essentially, you're just going to start blobbing it on. Now, you can use a spatula or a brush to apply this. It really doesn't matter. This is really sticky... Button polish is really sticky stuff, so I have this old brush which I don't even bother to clean because it sticks so deeply into it. So it's become a hard spatula. But that's fine... I just scoop it out! And you want it to sink into all of the crevices, of all of the textures that you have made. So yes, it doesn't look quite so pretty anymore, but it does have a glorious golden hue, which means it is onto the next stage of its life. If you want your plate to last a good long while, then two to three coats of this is a good idea. But if you're just making a test plate to try out the technique, than one coat, you can probably get away with it. Leave it to fully dry before you move on to the printing stage. 8. Printing the Plate - Getting inky!: Before I start printing, I set up my area in three zones. The dampening zone where I keep my clean unused paper and my water and my sponge. The printing zone, which has all of my printing ink brushes and clean cloths, as well as my plate. And the drying zone, which is simply a space where I can lay my fresh prints to dry. I also often use the floor if I need to, or you can peg your prints on the line if you have one. First, we need to dampen our paper. This is because damper paper is more malleable than dry and will be able to bend into all of the crevices of the plate much easier. It also helps the ink to transfer to the paper. My work surface is clean and non porous, so I can work on it directly. But you can always do this on a clean board or a tray too. This first sheet is just plain printer paper and I'm sponging water on very lightly all over. It's handy to dampen the paper first because then we can leave it to rest while we ink our plate. We're going to start inking up our plate so that we can take our first test print. So to begin with, I'm just going to use one colour just so that I can get a lay of the land and see which pieces are coming out easiest, which need a little more encouragement. I'm starting off with blue. It's always a good idea if you're going to do a bigger print session, where you're going to try lots of different types of coloured inks, one after the other, to start with a lighter one and move towards darker ones, if you can. Just because, say if you start with black straight away, then you're going to have more difficulty getting that black ink off in order for other ones to show through completely pristinely. So that's just something to bear in mind. I just have a little bit of ink inside this pot and I'm just going to get some on my brush. I'm just pulling away on the edge of the pot so that it's not hugely blobby on there. Then we're going to methodically just start scratching it on to the surface. Inking up a plate this size can feel like a slow process. But at this stage, you don't need to be too precise. Water-based inks do dry quicker than oil-based ones, so although you need to work with an element of speed, you don't need to stress - you do have time! I think this took me about eight to ten minutes to cover the plate fully. As you can see, I'm scratching the ink in quite roughly. This is why older bristly brushes are really great for this. While I'm trying to get into the general nooks of my textures, I'm not worrying if the very deepest bits get missed. Remember, only the upper most areas of the plate are likely to print. So as long as you catch those with ink, you'll see a result. Now I've moved the inks away just so that we have a nice clear area for us to bring our clean paper. This paper should be now feeling a little bit damp and floppy, but it shouldn't be slimy or drippy. So this is just standard printer paper and we're just going to plop that into the center. Now, your hands are the best tools that you have. Take them and gently press down onto your plate. What you'll be trying to do is to feel where your textures are. Now having just made your plate, you will know it the best. So you'll be able to feel out... say, I can feel where the clouds are starting here. And the more you press down, the more you'll see the imprint coming through the paper, slightly. The thinner the paper you have, the easier it will be for you to see just what impression you are creating. Now try and give equal attention to all the different areas where you have inked up. In particular, pay attention to the important parts. Here I'm doing the lighthouse and making sure that I pick up the tiny little window in the center there. And this is ripping the paper slightly actually. That's okay. That gives me an indication of something being a little bit out of sync there. And this is just a test plate [print], so that's okay. These things happen! Just keep going. And by doing certain sections at a time, then you're able to move the paper and encourage it into the different crevices without pulling it too much in two ways at the same time, if you see what I mean. Okay. I'm just using the base of my palm to give it a little more pressure on the boulders. And then as we come over to the grounding, I can come back to my fingers. Right. I think that's enough to be able to get an idea of where we are with this plate. So let's have a look. So this is our very first test print, and I wasn't expecting it to be as detailed as it probably will be later, because it's on very basic computer paper, which doesn't have as much give to be able to fold into the little nooks and crannies. But it does still give you this brilliant lay of the land so that you can see exactly how different textures are starting to come out. I'm super happy with the lighthouse here. The windows have come out all right. Well, that one's a little bit fuzzy, but that's okay. I'm really happy with this groundwork here because the textures of that are just lovely. And I'm super happy with the boulders because the textures of those are just gorgeous! Look at speckles of the sand paper coming through! And you really can see the delineation between each rock as well. I wasn't sure whether that was going to work, but it did. So I'm super happy about that. The tin foil also is coming out quite well. And I think what I will do though next time I print is not put too much pressure onto the foiled areas, because I just want a light layering of texture around those. So it may be a bit more like this top corner where it's just a little hint of the texture. What I would really like to do is have the cloud section a little bit darker so that it contrasts more with the general sky around it. But in general, I am really happy with this first test print. I think it's come out really well. And yeah, let's go on and print it on a second thinner piece of paper and see what we get. I'm using mulberry paper here, and it is a lot thinner than standard paper. While it is strong for printing with, it's still useful to be mindful of its delicacy while we dampen it. Stroke the sponge over lightly, being careful not to wrinkle it before leaving it to rest. With this next print, I'm going to put an extra bit of ink on some areas. I perhaps won't put any more fresh ink on the sky areas because I wanted those to be lighter anyway, and there is a little bit of ink still left, but I might top up some of these areas and definitely the lighthouse. I'm just going to push that little bit that I remember was sticking up through the paper. It's a little sharp edge where the sealant has just made the edge of the wool stick up. So I'm just going to squish that down so that it's less likely to tear through the paper. Re-inking is very much a trial and error learning curve. Getting a feel for how much ink is still on the plate, and figuring out where to add more is something you get more in tune with in time. So don't worry! At first, you could try going straight into a second print without re-inking at all, just to see what you get. From that, you get what is called a Ghost Print, and it can help you to gauge how much ink your plate is holding. Printmaking is all about experimentation and play. And as we can rarely guarantee specific outcome in a home practice, the pressure is off. We're all just having a go, seeing what happens, trying again and learning as we go. It's pretty joyful in my opinion! I'm being very careful with this paper because it's a lot thinner. As you can see, you can see my hand through it and it is actually still a little bit too damp. So I can feel the edges and they feel a bit drippy, which is not good. So I've got it laid onto a small hand towel. Just any towel will do. And I'm going to place another one on top, very carefully, making sure not to wrinkle the paper and then push down just very gently just to blot some of that excess moisture away. My paper is definitely a little better now. And I'm going to very carefully, it's a little bit tricky with this paper because it's so floppy, but try and line it up roughly with your plate. There we go. You can see through this paper and you can see where we need to start putting our pressure. Because this is such a thin paper, you don't need much pressure to get a result. You also don't need much pressure to tear it. So do be careful. If you feel like your plate is moving around too much underneath you you can use a non slip mat underneath, or you can stick this down with masking tape also. Now you remember, I didn't put too much... I didn't put any extra ink onto the sky. And I'm very lightly pushing on this area, just to get a hint of some of those textures coming through and you can see that they are coming through still, even though there is only secondary ink on there. Again, being very careful, just pressing down and feeling, adapting your fingers to the different curves and recesses. Let's see what we've got. Oh my goodness, I feel like it's gonna be good. Oh, yes! I'm enjoying that very much. So this is so interesting, isn't it? To see from just one piece of paper difference, the variation in the textures and the results that you get. Now, we did ink up the clouds more this time, gave it a little bit of extra. And they have definitely come out with some lovely, swirly, whirly textures. I'm so happy with that. Also, the lighthouse has still come out nice and clearly, which I'm really glad about. I very much like this sky more. So it really doesn't need anything extra on it. As I say, we didn't even top this up and we still have so much texture. It's actually amazing how much that is when we didn't even put a second coat on. And I'm still really happy with this area, how the boulders from the sandpaper start to mingle and merge with the tissue paper, which then takes us up into the other area over here. I do feel like this is expanding away from me out to the corners and I really, really enjoy it. So now we have played with one colour and we know exactly how this plate is working - which bits we can highlight, which bits we need to leave alone. So now we're going to move on to having more colours in the composition and seeing where else we can go. 9. Expand & Explore - Using more colours and testing some shading...: Let's go beyond one colour. I'm taking off the majority of the ink on the sky foil area with water and kitchen roll. I can't remove every last little bit of blue, but on a shallow texture like foil, I can do a pretty good job. It's harder to remove ink from denser areas like the wool. So bear that in mind as you start to try different colours. Collagraph plates have lots of places for the ink to hide, so it's hard to find perfection, but that's part of the joy. You are encouraged to roll with wherever the plate is taking you and see what happens. Colour time! I'm going to use a bit of yellow on our sky instead. So this is a little bit harder to see... We just have to hope for the best! You can see, it is picking up a slight greenish tinge because of the small pieces of blue which are creeping through. But that's okay. As I say, if you want to ever try anything with a very light colour, do it at the start of your printing session. Otherwise, other colors may well override your lightest ones. Now I'm going to use that yellow on top of some of the blue, I think from this side. Just to create a green texture coming, instead of just blue. You can absolutely mix inks as you would mix paints to create the hues that you want to apply to your plate. However, I do like to utilise the ink that is already on my plate and allow it to mingle directly with new shades as I put them on, blending them together in a very organic way. I think I might do something similar coming in just on the back of the clouds here. From this angle... Not a lot... I'd quite like to have a bit of a tinge on the upper part of the cloud. Just to see what happens. I might also do a little bit on some of the swirls just to see whether or not that picks up, I'm probably going to put a little bit of extra blue on those clouds, because we know that they need a bit extra. Then I think I'll also top up just a little bit of the boulders again. For the lighthouse, in this experiment, I'm going to use black ink. We've already seen how different levels of inking can have a big impact in creating contrast or highlighting specific features. Now, we're going to use colour to isolate a feature and give it more focus. Let's see what we've got... With this one, I really, really enjoy how those swirls have come out. It has picked up a little bit of green inside there and I think gives it a little bit of different dimension. So that's definitely something to carry forward in further experiments. I quite like the yellow around here. I think it's nice that it's a different colour to these two areas. I'm not too sure how well it works, but I'm not against it. So, it was a good experiment to try! Also, I really like how the little green areas have broken up the boulders. The boulders haven't come out quite so strong this time. I perhaps needed to ink them up a little bit more than I had before. However, the lighthouse is still standing pretty strong. So this was a good test. Shading and highlights. You can also use variations of colour, not just to separate one element from the next, but also to create shadow and depth within each element. I'm using black for this, but you can be more subtle about it by mixing darker and lighter tones of one colour and blending them together. Here, I'm using a blue color on the edge of the lighthouse, but letting the rest be black, blending the two colours gently to help create a sense of form. I also tried roughly shading the undersides of the boulders in black too, to see how a two-tone effect would suit them and whether it would create more distinction and space between them. So this has all sorts of things going on. I quite like the little speckles which come through. There was still some little bits of yellow left on there, but that's fine. These have come out quite well, but not quite as well-defined as they have been on previous ones. But again, that's okay. I quite like the two tone element of the lighthouse - gives it something a bit different. And I really do enjoy some of the shading in the boulders as well, makes them really pop out. One last printy-print! I always like to make sure I have black print version of my plate, and generally, I tend to do this at the end of a printing session, purely so that I can easily play with the other colours beforehand. I also really like it when little flecks of the previous colours show through in the black version. It's really subtle, but for me, they add little moments of interest where you least expect them. Also, by the time I ink my black plate, I've learned the quirks of my plate well, and I'm likely to get a really clear print. Having a clear black and white print is useful because it's easier to photograph or scan so that in the future, we can play with the image digitally. [Title: Cleaning!] At the end of using your plate, if you would like to clean it, just to give it a bit of longevity so if you come back to it later there isn't ink that has dried and crusted into certain areas, then you can do so. With water-based inks you can use a cloth and some water. Whereas with oil-based inks, you can use vegetable oil on a cloth. As mentioned, you won't get every thing off, and certainly, the flattest parts are the ones which are easiest to clean. But even just a small dabbing on the area can raise of good amount. When you're ready to store your plate away, pop it between two sheets of paper to keep it all safe and snuggly. And that's it! You are now a printer extraordinaire! 10. You Did It! Here are some final thoughts...: [Humming & Singing] You did it! You did it! [Laughs] Thank you so much for joining me and for embracing this joyful land of collagraph. I hope you've had fun and that you feel empowered to try out this technique in the future with a variety of subjects. If, for example, you would like to see how you can build characters using collagraph, then do check out my other class too. Make sure to celebrate to the prints that went well! Perhaps you could frame one to display on your wall or gift it to a friend. Remember, nothing is wasted in printmaking. Don't throw away any rougher test prints or wonky experiments. You can cut them up to use in making collages, or you can draw on top of them with other mediums. And you can also take photos of any prints you make and pull them into digital programs, such as Procreate or Illustrator, where you can play with adjusting colours or adding other elements to your heart's content. And while you're taking photos, remember, please do share some of them with us! Sharing your art is so empowering and I so love to see where students take their creativity next. I have loved being your art-buddy on this adventure, but remember, the adventure does not stop here! If you enjoyed the collagraph, then you may also enjoy trying other printmaking techniques such as Lino-cut or Monotype. Do keep an eye on my YouTube channel for more artsy, crafty inspiration. And if you'd like to hear about my future Skillshare classes first, then do hop over and give me a follow. Thank you so much for spending your time with me. Keep making to make happy, and I'll see you next time!