Project 12: collatype collage prints - Part 2 - 'Heart strings'

I have spent some time researching the heart and the brain recently. (I will talk about the brain in my next post).I was inspired by a couple of MOOCs (massive online open access courses) I had participated in over recent years. One of these was about medical humanities and the incorporation of art and humanities into health care(1). This one raised some philosophical questions about the heart and heart transplantation from the point of view of surgeons, patients, literature and art. 

I also read a novel entitled 'heal the living' (2) which looked at how the lives of all the people involved in the central event of a heart transplant were affected: from the parents of the donor to the doctors, nurses, the recipient of the transplant and their family. It was a very powerful novel which I would thoroughly recommend.  I would like to explore these philosophical themes further, but for the time being I am taking baby steps and I have contented myself with the physicality of the heart. I have been inspired by microscopic and macroscopic images of the heart, the heart muscle and the papillary muscles and valves. Some of the microscopic structures bear striking similarity to other macroscopic structures in their form. Others are simply beautiful in their own right. I have previously made several sketches of these images and a linocut of the papillary muscles which had an architectural, cave-like appearance to it. 

I used one of my sketches of the papillary muscles as a starting point for the collagraph print which I created on the intensive printmaking course at Centro Dedalo. The title 'heart strings' refers to their use in our culture as a metaphor to describe for example an emotive work of literature or music "plucking your heart strings". The chordae tendinae are the strings to which the metaphor alludes.

This collagraph was constructed on a piece of mat board. I made shapes and lines by cutting and peeling away pieces of the surface of the mat board to differing depths. I then applied various pieces of card, paper and fabric using PVA glue. I particularly enjoyed manipulating, stretching and pulling a piece of scrim to apply to the plate. After sticking the pieces securely to the board, the whole plate was coated with several layers of spray-on transparent plastificant. The advantage of this is that it makes the whole thing impermeable to moisture but it is a fine spray so it doesn't interfere too much with the texture. Thicker coatings such as yacht varnish or PVA glue may clog the finer textural elements, thus reducing their effect in the final print.

My first collagraph plate - the photograph was taken after printing so
there is ink residue present. 

On the course, I only had time to make one print from the plate because we covered a lot of different techniques during the week. The photo below is the print I made on the course. This one was printed by first inking the plate by the intaglio method in a bright crimson. After wiping, I relief inked the plate in a dark blue using a single pass of the roller.

First print from the plate. Intaglio inked in crimson and relief inked in blue.

The rollover in blue provided good contrast with the red. However, either there wasn't quite enough ink on the roller or the diameter of the roller was too small so it completed a full revolution before the end of the plate. This has made the relief inking a bit patchy in the top third of the print. 

When I returned home, I decided to experiment with making some more prints from this plate. Although I had thoroughly cleaned the plate, there was still some residual ink present so I applied a coat of clear acrylic lacquer before I started.

I decided to try intaglio inking "alla poupee", applying different coloured inks to different areas (I used stubby stiff paintbrushes rather than a pad of scrim or felt because the areas were relatively small. For the first attempt, I used a combination of Hawthorn sonic lipstick pink, hawthorn sonic orange and hawthorn indigo. I was hoping for a fiery halo of orange around the papillary muscle fading out to a subtle pink:

Second print from the same plate: Inked all poupee in indigo, sonic orange
and sonic lipstick pink. Too much colour blending.

This print didn't work out as I had envisioned. I had inked all of the areas simultaneously and then tried to wipe them. I found it impossible to wipe the small adjacent areas without blending the inks. This meant that instead of a lovely bright orange focus in the central area, there was a muddy brownish grey. 

I decided to try again using just two colours. This time I applied and worked in the darker indigo ink then thoroughly wiped the plate before applying the pink ink in selected areas. This time the colour blending wasn't so bad. Although, on balance, I think I still prefer the first print with the combination of relief and intaglio inking because I like the halo effect around the more prominent pieces of textural materials. I think it has more visual impact. However, there is something somehow more tranquil about the lighter and less contrasting intaglio inked image. 

Third print from the same plate: Selectively inked and wiped in indigo and
sonic lipstick pink 

What worked well:

• Progressive peeling of layers of mat board for the creation of texture and depth
• Combining intaglio and relief inking on the same print creates good contrast
• some of the textural elements showed up very well e.g scrim, leaf skeleton. 
• inking one colour and wiping it before applying a second colour

What didn't work:

• Inking adjacent areas in different colours and trying to wipe them at the same time can result in muddy colours
• some of the delicate textures are destroyed by being fixed with PVA glue because it floods the texture. (For example fine mesh)
• Insufficient ink on the roller or a roller of insufficient diameter (so it completes its roll before the end of the plate) can cause patchy inking at one end of the plate
• The composition isn't great. If I were to re-do this print I would probably make the papillary muscle larger and less central. 

References:

(1) https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/medicine-and-the-arts

(2) Kerangal, M. and Moore, J. (2016). Mend the living. London: Maclehose Press.