I spend the afternoon at Swansea Print Workshop but didn’t have any plates or blocks ready for inking so I did a spot of drawing instead. This is our lovely old Columbian Press, dating from 1855, with one of our artist/printmakers inking up a collagraph in the foreground.
It’s drawn onto a sheet of stretched Bockingford, sized with rabbit skin glue and coloured randomly with acrylic washes in red, blue and yellow. I used willow charcoal for initial sketching and carbon, white oil pastel and white chalk with a smidgen of yellow oilbar to work it up. It’s A2 size (23.5 x 16.5 inches; 60 x 40 cms).
I was well out of my comfort zone, drawing interiors and machines, although I managed to get a human being in. It’s hard to draw a machine without making it look like a technical illustration so I’ll keep grappling with it.
scribblah 
It`s amazing how old that printing machine is-and still in use. Clueless as I am, I know nothing about sizing, but rabbit skin glue? Is that hard to find?
Sizing is a barrier painted onto paper or canvas to protect the paper / canvas from the paint and vide versa. usually, acrylic gesso is used these days but rabbit skin glue is traditional and readily available from art suppliers
It would be an interesting exercise to ask people what the word “Columbian” conjures up. Like yourself, I associate it with a printing machine. Some though would think of a South American person, a type of coffee or, just possibly, another vegetable substance.
hmmmm
Love it!
Thanks 🙂