Back to the Spirals.

 I want to have 3 finished works in this series, so I'm back to the gelatine printing with my second set of hand carved stamps.

I have repeated the stamping with the smaller of the first set, but the 2 larger ones are new. I'm particularly happy with the new spiral stamp, seen clearly on the lower right of the top image.

Serendipity.

 After about 10 pulls of the print from the tree lino-cut, I was disappointed in the lack of texture I was getting. I had made lots of tiny marks along the branches, but the printing ink blocked them all. Then with a slightly dryer roller, I managed to get one print with some great texture.

                                 Now to get the solid border to print properly, so far so good.

New Project.

 Here I'm trying out a lovely soft lino substitute that I've had in the drawer for some years.  It's lovely and soft to carve, but very thin. In fact I've gouged out to the reverse side a couple of time, luckily just tiny holes.

          I don't like that branch low down on the left, it doesn't look right at all, it will have to go!

                           I'll leave it for the time being, but it will definitely be removed.

Much better without it. I need to balance up the top and bottom edges a bit, as it's a bit top heavy and the left side needs to match the right one a little better. More work tomorrow!

Fantastic!

 As part of the White Knight Melbourne Festival,http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/white-night-melbourne-2015-what-not-to-miss-20150221-13l7ho.html the water feature outside the national Gallery of Victoria was featured as the site for this wonderful installation. At night the neon (?) tubes are lit up and the flashing lights are synchronised to music. They dance!

 By daylight you can see just how they are constructed. The heads are rather like the iconic sweets called Lifesavers.

                                                                 Aren't they fantastic?

                                                       The reflections too are delightful.

Definitely the Final Foto!

If you click on the image it should give you an enlarged version of the piece, and in it you can see just a tiny row of hand stitching with metallic thread on each of the circular motifs. Somehow it seems to integrate the applied motifs better with just that little bit of handwork.

Almost There!

                                     This is the last of the machine stitching that I intend to do.

                                  A little bit of hand stitching and I believe that it's finished.

At Last Some Stitching.

 Time to do some stitching after weeks of sun printing, stamp carving, digital manipulation and stamping on fabric. Here I have just loosely outlined some of the main shapes before making a focus of the separate motifs.

I will use different coloured threads for each lot of radiating lines from the motifs, then added gold, and different shades of copper thread as highlights. As the circles aren't finally ironed on, I can tuck the beginnings and endings of the various lots of stitching under the edges for a neater effect.

Decisions...Decisions!

       Here is an array of  sun printed images for possible use onto the background fabric.
     I've placed them all onto a sheet of Vliesofix (Bondaweb) and ironed them to collect the glue.

The few that I've chosen use for the final piece. I liked the idea of the bright yellow, but in fact it wasn't right at all. These harmonious colours blending in seem much better to my eye. Even the more definite prints seemed too strong, so I chose the more muted ones.

Return to the Spirals.

 Having decided that I wanted to use the central spiral motif on the background, I realised that I needed to sun print just the spirals rather than waste fabric and dye on the whole image. Here I've got the negative, seen below, out in the sun getting a few prints. Unfortunately it was very difficult to photograph with the bright sun  reflecting on the glass.

I isolated the central spiral in Photoshop, making 2 negatives of different sizes which I printed with a few dye colours, sepia, burnt orange and a yellow.

Final print.

       Apart from trying a little bit of water colour on the flower petals, I'm finished with this project.
I have decided to 'hang the expense' and buy fresh lino for cutting in future, this was just too hard to get a smooth line.  Still, the rough outlines sort of suit the subject, a very rough bush plant, although the wild variety is white, not the pale pink that I intend to paint this one.

Nearly Finished.

As the T-Tree plant has very spiky leaves, I thought that a border of spiky marks would be appropriate.
I haven't tried printing this out yet, but I would expect a fair bit of tidying up will be needed.

Another Project.

Although I'm still working on the spiral theme, I also wanted to use up some old lino that I had from previous attempts at lino-cutting. I had found that I preferred to use the soft rubber for ease of cutting, but as I had several bits of old lino sitting around, and because I needed an image of something using 'T' I decided to carve a sprig of T-Tree.  I had a clear photo that I had taken some years ago, so this is the progress I made. Unfortunately the lino is a bit old, hard and brittle, but it's not too bad.

There are several slips of the cutting tools evident, but I might still be able to use the plate.
I had to make the petals of the flowers 'hollow' so that they didn't end up a solid colour when printing, and that was a challenge with the old hard lino.
I still have to work out how to edge the image, but I'm quite pleased with progress so far.
I will have to ink in the stamens after printing, as that really would be impossible to carve with this old lino.
The first print, below is better than I had expected!

Moving Right Along.

 I'm much happier with this version on fabric.  The background is darker, and the over stamping lighter in a copper colour. The metallic doesn't show up on the screen.

I took the drastic step of cutting out parts of the original sun prints, just tiny circles from the middle of a couple of spirals. Hmmmmm........not sure about this idea......maybe.

Variations on a Theme.

I've been carving stamps based on the central circle of the original sun print spiral design.. I will use them with the gelatine plate so that they don't have to be as perfect as they would have to be to use as stamps on paper....thank goodness, as they are pretty rough and ready. I've mounted them onto scrap pieces of Perspex to use, as that way I can see exactly where I'm stamping. Note the black marks for the mid line of each stamp. Each one measures around 7.5 cm, so they are quite large.

Back to the Stamped Fabric.

 I have decided that the printed elements on this piece of background fabric are much too dark. Just to see what it looks like, I stamped over the original ink with a bronze paint. It doesn't show up in the photo, and in fact it doesn't show up on the darker printed elements either.  Scrap that version!

                      This is a bit of a Photoshop fiddle, interesting, but not quite what I wanted.

This is a slightly better version of the original printed fabric, which I will stamp over again in a more subtle colour, with not quite so much stamping either.

Rocks, Mt. Strathbogie.

        As we came over the crest of the hill, this large rock definitely appeared to have a face on it.

                  So many wonderful moss covered rocks in between the white trunked trees.

One can imagine the awe with which the indigenous people of the area might have regarded a huge balanced rock like this one.