I have two newly doubled foils: two more of my digitally foiled foil plates!

Some of the current messiness of my art studio is due to selling my Blick etching press, and trying to deal with old plates I will no longer use for printmaking. Often printing plates are very handsome in themselves. I love those that hold some old dry ink, but those without can be painted or otherwise colored. I created these digitally foiled images from two “low tech etch” plates, both made from mat board & aluminum foil.

When printing, I inked and wiped these plates etching style, but if I made a mat board and foil with a more relief, I could ink this type of plate as a relief or collograph plate. These plates are very cheap, quick and easy to make, and lovely prints are possible.

I colored both of the actual foil plates using glitter marker pens, and these are fairly handsome, but I don’t invest in these pens, and the colors are not subtle! I much prefer the digitally enhanced results: hence the “foiled foil etching plates”. With the digital images, I can tone down colors, or change colors and shapes altogether. Here are the scanned plates, only slightly light/color adjusted. The pen lines show up, and the colors are not quite to my taste!