Sophie Holliday

I wanted to see what marks and impressions I could create using my beach finds. After saturating pieces of heavyweight paper in water I pressed and wrapped the paper around the shells, creating textured imprints. I found that placing the forms onto a light box highlighted the abstract marks. I photographed them and darkened the marks in Photoshop. I think that it looks like a fossilised shell.

Today I used the press in college to produce some collagraph prints, with the latex moulds, using oil based inks. It was trial and error adjusting the press to the correct pressure to give an even print.

Decided to make a set of mono prints using latex moulds from the plaster casts. I spread the liquid latex using a paintbrush over the plaster casts - if you are going to do this, make sure you use an old paintbrush. This is what it did to mine... It is now a fan brush. 😲 I backed the latex mould onto thick card and rolled out a layer of water based ink onto a gel printing plate. After pressing the latex moulds into the ink and removing them, I took a print. These are the results. I like the outlined impression that the raised parts of the mould gave - it almost looks like an x-ray.  I am going to try another technique to see if I can achieve more detail by using a press.

As the plaster cast I created in Mousehole wasn't very successful, I used the objects I collected from the beach to produce a set of smaller casts at college. Rolled out the clay to the size of a large matchbox and pressed in the beach finds to create an impression. Then, filled the boxes with plaster and produced a small set of casts. I like the tactile quality to the casts. I think that I will develop these further to see what other pieces I can produce using these patterns. I created a set of shallow clay forms so that I could produce a paper graphite rubbing. Although the impression were not as deep as my originals, the detail within the shells was still difficult to capture.

I returned to Mousehole harbour a couple of days later to remove the canvas from the chain. Some subtle marks were created that I like, however I think I need to leave the objects wrapped up in canvas for a longer length of time.

Arrived at Mousehole Cornwall - a great harbour to create some rusting samples.