Adding a Little Bit More.

I've added a bit more to this piece that I posted about a few days ago, can you spot the little patches of 6 squares to the sides of the very central motif? So far so good, but what next I wonder.

Weeds!

A local unkempt nature strip provided a wealth of weeds going to seed, so I harvested some that looked promising and pressed them good and flat. Later I glued them to a collagraph plate, sealed them with shellac and let them really dry well. You might have seen the result that I posted a couple of days ago. They made quite good printing plates, but this one I decided to paint to really show up the seed heads, which were actually green in real life, but I painted orange to provide more contrast.

Buttercup Etching.

 The next flower chosen by the group for our monthly art work was the buttercup. Up until now all the flowers chosen have been Australian natives, but the person who chose this month's flower had just spent some time in the UK and loved all the bright yellow buttercups. Above is the drawing on acetate ready to be etched at then printed.

          I made 3 different pints from the acetate, the pale one came first, then darker and darker.

                I decided to paint all 3 of the prints, and even now I'm not sure which one I like best.

From Star to Bag.

 This is what I ended up making from the abandoned patchwork star that I posted a couple of days ago. I added some fabric to the bottom of the bag which I also used for the handles, and I lined it with some pale peachy orange cotton that I also had on hand. The buttons on the handles are for decoration, but also add to the strength of the handles when the bag is used.

I'm not sure if the items made go back to the person who handed in the UFO, or whether the final makers keep the end product. Either way, it will be a useful tote bag for one of us I hope!

New Challenge.

A group of women who meet once a month decided to have a bit of fun with our Un Finished Objects, UFOs.
We each put a UFO into a paper bag on the table and chose one other than our own to take home to finish, or to make into something entirely different. This is what I found in the paper bag that I took, a beautifully made patchwork star. We aren't supposed to know whose UFOs are whose, but seeing these colours of orange and green, I can make an educated guess!

Reverse Applique.

 I was given a few pieces of highly patterned stretch velvet, although I had no idea of what to use them for. With an exhibition looming that has Art Deco in the title I thought that I might work on a design from that era. At my first attempt, the velvet and the layer underneath, also stretch velvet, just moved and stretched all over the place. Eventually I stabilised each layer and working from the back I narrow satin stitched my design.

 On the front I cut out the elements of the design, revealing the variegated layer underneath. Here I'm part way through cutting out the design, very carefully so as not to cut through all the layers.

All done, or at least the first part of the piece, although I'm not quite sure where I'm going with it next!

More Collagraph Printing.

 Using the plate that I made with local weeds in flower, I tried it out on two different types of paper.
The one above is on proper printing paper in a lovely creamy yellow colour. The dark patch in the middle is a little over inked, or under cleaned, so I'm not entirely happy with this print.

This one is on a piece of Watercolour paper that is a bright white in colour. There is more definition in the foliage, and plenty of contrast with lights and darks,  so it might be the best one. I do like the cream paper better though!

Further Collagraph Printing

 I made these plates a little while ago, but because of the time needed for setting up of the equipment, the rubbing back and actual printing, I haven't had time until today. Above is a 2 colour print which is moderately successful, given that I printed the whole plate in one go, rather than the colours separately.

                                                  The same plate printed in monochrome.

This is the better part of another larger late that definitely didn't work well. The ink was still too thick in some places and rather smudgy in others. It really is a demanding process that I haven't as yet even begun to master!

Gelatine Plate Prints.

 Having managed to break my new gelatine plate in half as I took it out of the tin, I had to microwave all the cut up pieces and reset it. It shouldn't have broken with glycerine and isopropyl alcohol in it, but it did. I managed to do a few prints this afternoon, none that I'm really thrilled by, but I might cut them up anyway. Above is just a local weed that I pressed flat a couple of months ago.

 Leaves and stems creeper of  with small leaves that I pressed before it dropped it's leaves for Autumn.

                            I'm not sure what these pressed leaves are, a Bottlebrush perhaps.

A Japanese Maple variety with lovely fine leaves. I really like these leaves and will probably use them again.

The gelatine Plate.

 I made up my old gelatine plate a long time ago, maybe more than a year ago, so it wasn't surprising that it started to become less than a good printing surface. Although these signs of mould were on the underneath of the plate, it wasn't long before the upper surface started to go dark brown and to be too dry to use for gelatine prints.

 I just left it in the tin while I went on to something else, and it eventually dried out completely, resulting in this plate of hard brittle gelatine with the remnants of pain still in it.

 I'm sure that I could have broken it up, added water and warmed to useable consistency again, but rather than waste time, I made up a lovely new plate instead.

Here is the new plate poured into the old tin that I scrubbed up for re-use. There are a couple of pin prick faults in it, but I'm sure that it'll be fine for the sorts of printed backgrounds that I want to make. At 21 cm x 30 cm it's a lot bigger than the commercial Gel plates, that is if you don't want to spend a fortune on a large plate..

All Gone!

This is all that remains of the first 3 raised and covered vegetable garden beds that have been removed. All that soil looks good, but it is dry, sandy and thick with roots from the trees that you can see in the background, especially from the Rubber tree on the left which started out as an indoor pot plant! There are another 3 beds to be dismantled, with another one already gone in another part of the garden.

Things Come and Things Go.

 Some years ago these raised and enclosed vegetable garden beds  built in our garden. The idea was to keep out the marauding possums, birds and rats who consistently ate our produce. Well that worked for all but the rats, who just ate through the mesh at the front or crawled up underneath it. The ends and tops of the cages were of aviary wire, but we had to be able to harvest the veggies ourselves, hence the woven heavy twine 'curtains'.

 We persevered for about 7 years, but in the end it wasn't the rats that made us decide to dismantle the beds, but the fact that the supposedly long lasting and 'eco timber' surrounds started to rot away.  Above you can see the custom made shade cloth covers that protected the vegetables through our scorching summers. These were huge and heavy, taking 2 people quite a while to put into place.

The penultimate photo of the dismantled beds in the southern end of the vegetable garden. What a job that was to unscrew, unbolt and take apart the super structure. Big decisions now about what to do next, as we still want to grow vegetables, but not to lose almost all of it to the animals!

Photoshop Play.

 With no time to set up for more printing so far this week, I had a play with one of the collagraph plates in Photoshop. The one above reminds me of looking out from a camp site at night with the light on the nearby vegetation and the darkness beyond.

This is another version, looking much colder and with the added moon and it's glow, more of the background hills are visible.