Progress with collagraphs

How I would love to spend much more time working with printmaking! Nevertheless I am also enjoying the measured progress of one day per week, with a wait of a week for my prints to dry. It is unusual for me to work on images which have no title; but there is a feeling about each one which helps me to develop it.
I love using chine colle to add to, embellish, expand, ... an image, and because the above figure is a warrior in my mind's eye - perhaps ancient - I struck on the idea of using some of my piles of Greek stamps in the process. I like the result, but I think it is not there yet.

The next collagraph plate with which I used stamps is one made up of ginkgo and eucalyptus leaves on a piece of khadi paper which I had machine stitched. In this case I'm really not sure about the bright stamps on the right which grab too much attention. I had taken too much ink off the plate before printing, but I quite like the cropped slither below which is more abstract as well as the stamps blending in.

I have long had an interest in printmaking, and in effect the way I go about producing my cloth for stitching is one form of printmaking. I started taking these classes last term (i.e. after Easter) for three purposes: 1. to get me physically away from the environs of my mother and her care one day per week, regularly. 2. to explore an image-making process about which I was already curious, and 3. to shake up my own design process because I was feeling that the new designs for textile work were becoming stuck.

The classes are succeeding in all three. My daily stress headaches have gone, and I wake up now with developing design thoughts in my mind pushing out inadequate-daughterly worries, and the proportion of time spent using my brain is beginning to increase once more. More important than anything I am beginning again to enjoy life and to look forward to the next day's work - and to finding more printmaking books to spend too much money on!