Michel Dupont workshop | Learn engraving in Frelighsburg

When you love prints, their light, the delicacy of the designs, you start dreaming… of making them! But when you’re not an artist, is it possible? Yes ! The Press participated, with other neophytes, in a printmaking course with the engraver Michel Dupont, in his studio in Frelighsburg.

Eric Clement
The Press

Michel Dupont’s workshops are organized on weekends, 15 hours spread over two days. The engraver welcomes four or five people per workshop in order to be sufficiently available for each person. “I did it twice with six people, but I couldn’t refuse, because each time it was a group of businessmen from the American Midwest who didn’t come for creation, but for therapy! he says.

It is true that this course in contemporary engraving goes beyond learning an artistic technique. We come out reinvigorated. Michel Dupont has a lot to do with it. His teaching is done gently, with all respect and with a serious mix of openness to each person’s abilities. “Everyone is capable of creating,” he says. You just have to not stress, let yourself go. It’s the same for a professional artist. »

How is the course going?

When we arrived, Michel Dupont had already prepared the necessary paraphernalia provided to each participant. Brushes of different sizes, small squares of recycled paper to apply the colours, wet sheets of paper for printing, top-of-the-range color inks from the French house Charbonnel.

The engraving course is not done on a metal plate, but on a plexiglass plate. Dressed in work clothes, we start by scratching the previously sanded and cleaned plate, making small scratches on the plate with the tip of a precision blade (X-Acto type).

Then, it is covered with a fine mixture of marble powder and binder. We learn to make shapes, lines and reliefs with spatulas. Hollows, protrusions, solid masses that you have to know how to gauge well, and attenuate with wood chisels, because their size or their finesse will determine the look of the improvised work. The plate is left to dry for an hour, near a fan, before learning to work on the coloring. First with black, red and yellow. Coloring, performed with gloves, is a delicate step, because the parsimony of the gesture defines the appearance of the first print.

We concentrate. Our attention is totally taken by this small colored square from which our first creation will emerge. But also by the sweet music Spiegel in Spiegel, by Arvo Pärt, which Michel Dupont broadcasts to make this moment of creation totally bewitching.

Once the plates are to our liking, the master places them on his intaglio press, covered with sheets of Saint-Armand paper. Two minutes of passage of the roller and we discover the result. Everyone comments, raves, criticizes. Michel Dupont points out the areas where the light is the most beautiful. “In printmaking, it’s the light that counts,” he says.

Passionate, Michel Dupont has loved giving these printmaking workshops for 18 years. He says he learns from each course. “Because I give you a technique, parameters, I coach you, but most of the time, people try things that in principle we don’t do, because we know it doesn’t work. But once in a while it works! When you’ve been practicing a technique for 50 years, you end up falling into ruts. So these courses are indeed also interesting for me. After each class, I always have a little creative boost. »

One of the participants, Philippe Prevost, electrical engineer, proved to be excellent in this artistic exercise which was a first for him. “In engineering too, there is creativity,” he says. Especially when creating printed circuits. In this internship, the process interested me. The pressure, the transfer. I let myself get carried away. Sometimes we need to open our minds. It feels good during the pandemic. It does not have a price. »

Retired Christine Gosselin, a former primary school visual arts teacher, is delighted to finally have the time to create, she says. “I’m having a blast with this course. Michel shares his expertise with us. We are in total pleasure. It allows me to reclaim my baggage, in action! I have the sting. I have just equipped myself with a press, so I will continue to make prints! »

Specializing in helping relationships, particularly in art therapy, Dolores Prevost also greatly appreciated her internship. “I really like this material. It suits me well, because I discover my inner artist. Hollows and reliefs, it’s a mode of expression that resembles me. We are made of hollows and reliefs, repressed emotions and others that come to the surface. »

The real pleasure of this workshop stems enormously from the type of teaching of Michel Dupont. Generous in the transmission of knowledge and the memories that it allows us to take away. Normally, in two days, we realize in his studio-gallery 4 plates and 12 prints on paper. But he does not look at the expense. We left with about twenty impressions and five plates that we can always reuse and improve. We ask for your indulgence, here are two of our results!

Atelier Michel Dupont, 30 Principale Street, Frelighsburg, Quebec