Fifth week of Collagraph

When printing on the map, I placed the plates on the map, figuring out which areas I want to use for the background. I decided to use the outer edges of Australia as much as possible, to match the ocean’s colour blue to the prints’ sky colour.

From the previous prints, I realised that when I roll the whole plate with ink, the prints look too dark and bland as the sky looks gloomy and makes the whole thing look rather bleak, which I was not intending to do. Thus, I covered the sky part of the print with paper so only the islands and the sea is printed. I also thought too much black ink on a paper with detailed images will look too messy.

As I placed the map papers on top of each print, I also considered how the white/green land area will be shown when the islands are printed on top of them. Therefore I attempted to use the white areas that portray Australia to be merged into the pointy and curved shapes of the islands.

Using the prints I did beforehand, I also noticed that the sun would look too grim just in black, so I decided to use bright yellow ink with a little bit of warm red ink mixed. I rolled a paper stencil I cut in the exact shape of the sun on the plate with the yellow ink mixture, placed it on top of the plate and printed it.

After I printed all plates onto the map and placed them all together, it looked much more beautiful and seemed to express the idea that “Islands” was referring to Australia much better than the first monotone prints. I also thought the yellow sun and use of the Australian map powerfully hold the pieces together as a panorama landscape piece, also somewhat more interesting in terms of the harmony that the colours create.