Having had some French polish delivered at the end of last week, I created another collagraphy plate so I could try out printing the same plate both intaglio (where you pull the ink from the troughs and cuts you make in the surface of the mount board) and in relief (where the ink comes from the high points in the plate).
Although I knew that shellac was used as a varnish to help seal the plate so it will last a little longer and is easier to ink and clean, I hadn’t realised that first, shellac was a resin produced by Indian beetles and second, that it was used in French polish. Anyway, this is the result of the intaglio printing – I did make the mistake of not photographing the print properly before I had a go at the relief print (the results of which I’ll put in the next post), so grabbed a screen shot from the time-lapse GoPro footage, but you can see roughly how it turned out!
Plate before inking – the colour is due to the French polish. 
First print
Kate Chappell 