Thursday 31 March 2011

Goetz Technique - One


On Tuesday Richenda Court (http://www.richendacourt.co.uk/index.html) started a new course on the Goetz technique.  This is a method I had not heard of before so was curious to learn more about it.  The method is named after Henri Goetz who was pioneer in the use of carborundum for printmaking.  Carborundum is like the fine grit you get on sand paper.

I have used carborundum on collographs by painting a layer of glue on the plate and sprinkling over the carborundum, a bit like using glitter.  However this can be hard to control the densities that you end up with.  Richenda showed us that with this method you mix together white acrylic paint and PVA glue and then add some carborundum.   The more carborundum the denser the colour on the final print will be.  This make the use of the carborundum far more controllable.

We used thin perspex sheet as the base for the print matrix as this has the advantage that it does not require sealing with varnish afterwards.  So we started with two plates to work on for one print.  On one plate we worked a dry point image (by scratching into the plate) and on the second we painted on the carborundum mix.  We had three different mixes, to give light, medium and dark tones.

So my dry point print is below.


And this is the painted carborundum plate.



The mix needs at least 24 hours to dry so we could not print this plate on Tuesday.  In the photo it is not possible to see but the three different tones have all been used, the mixes with more carborundum in become slightly grey. 

Come back next week and see how the finished print looks.

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