Nature in Black and White

Global Nature Beat is on a break for Christmas, so here is something a little different — some pictures I made after signing up for an evening class in printmaking.

I had never made a print before, but had always liked drawing. Did I ever draw though? Not for many years, no. There never seemed to be enough time. The evening class — 2.5 hours every month — was the structure I needed.

Each session was deeply relaxing and a wonderful foil to my daily focus on scientific reports and the clack-clack-clack of my laptop’s keyboard. Below are four of the prints I made, each using a different method.

Monoprint: This is the simplest of the techniques I learned. After using a roller to cover an A4 piece of plastic with ink, I then taped a sheet of paper on top of the plastic and drew on the page. As I drew, the image below formed on the underside of the paper. No printing press required!

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Collagraph: This involved creating an image by pasting various materials — including bubble wrap, seeds, corrugated cardboard and strips cut from an orange juice carton — onto a sheet of card. I then painted ink over the entire surface. One trip through a hand-rolled printing press, with a piece of clean paper laid over the inked montage, resulted in the print below.

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Drypoint: For this picture, I took an A4 sheet of Perspex and etched a drawing of a Cape buffalo into it, using a sharp metal nail in place of a pencil. I then covered the surface of the Perspex with ink before rubbing it all off. This left ink only in the tiny cuts I had made with the nail. I then ran the Perspex through the printing press with a sheet of paper on top. The pressure forced the remaining ink out of its crevices and onto the paper.

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Linocut: I gouged away the surface of a piece of linoleum with a sharp knife and some shaped metal tools, leaving intact only the areas that I wanted to appear black in the image. With a roller, I applied a quick layer of thick ink that covered these higher areas and left the cut areas clean. After I covered the lino with a piece of paper and put them through the press, my orca was born.

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In sharing these images, I am reminding myself to make more time for creative fun in 2025. I’ll be back in January, when normal Global Nature Beat service resumes. Until then, happy new year!