Student work from a collagraph and monoprint workshop

Collagraphy (sometimes spelled collography) is a

printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proces ...

process in which materials are glued or sealed to a rigid substrate (such as paperboard or

wood Wood is a structural tissue/material found as xylem in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulosic fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin t ...

) to create a plate. Once inked, the plate becomes a tool for imprinting the design onto paper or another medium. The resulting print is termed a collagraph. Collagraph plates

The term "collagraph" was coined by

Glen Alps Glen Alps (1914-1996) was a printmaker and educator who is credited with having developed the collagraph. A collagraph is a print whose plate is a board or other substrate onto which textured materials are glued. The plate may be inked for printi ...

in the 1950s, and is derived from the Greek word ''koll'' or ''kolla'', meaning glue, and ''graph'', meaning the activity of

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

. Artists use a variety of materials in collagraphy, including yarn, fabric, tape, different varieties of cut paper or card, leaves, feathers, and acrylic mediums. The application of ink onto the collagraph plate is versatile, consisting of intaglio-inking into recesses, brayer or paintbrush inking onto

relief Relief is a sculpture, sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''wikt:relief, relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give ...

surfaces, or a combination of these methods. A print can be made with, or without use of a press.

See also

References

Further reading