Final Touch.

I couldn't help adding just one final touch to this piece, a very faint colour to the vegetation, particularly the etched piece on the right. I guess it could be classified as mixed media now, with dry point etching, pressed flower stamping and now a touch of water colour.

Layers.

I initially thought that the etching on thin hand made paper was a failure, but here I've glued the cut out beetles over the top of the paper with very faint images and together they give a good dark print.
I also added printings of pressed ferns to the mix, and it may well be finished..................not quite sure however.

Dry Point Etching.

 This is a mock up of the print that I wanted to make, using copies of my hand carved stamps, pieces of my sun prints and actual Eucalypt leaves.

 Here I've used a piece of acetate to copy the beetles and sun print patterns with an electric engraver.
I thought that I could work out a way of using the leaves by embossing them in the printing press, but they don't show up well enough, so I'll leave that area blank for the moment.

 This messy looking photo is of the etching ink partially rubbed off. One has to deposit the ink onto the plate, by toothbrush in this case, and then rub off the excess. The ink stays in the grooves made by the engraver and the rest of the area is rubbed clean.

    Of course the print will be in reverse. This one is printed with  sepia coloured ink on a fawn paper.

                                              Using the same paper this print is in black.

 I thought that a handmade paper with lots of inclusions might be interesting, but the image is too       indistinct on this paper.

This print is too pale, so it's a waste of some really nice handmade paper unfortunately. Maybe I could use the reverse for something else! Next I'll try to add some prints from the leaves that I wanted to use earlier.

Back to the Lino.

 As part of the series of monthly flower works this year, this third month features the Protea.  Previously I have made lino cuts of the Flame Tree & Bottlebrush, making both into cards from the final print. Here is the original lino fixed into a forme to keep it steady for printing.

 Just to see how it would work, I carved out the butterfly and have made a stamp of the butterfly to fit into the space. I have also carved individual Protea leaves, so it will all be combined into one image over the next few weeks. The ink that I used takes quite a few days to dry, so they will have to be set aside for now.

This is the reservoir of red ink on the white tile that I dipped into when rolling the ink out for printing. I really liked how it looked, especially the little zigzag line running down.

Moth Mandala

Some weeks ago I posted a photo of part of this print that was in progress. Well they are now finished, all 5 of them, and one is being exhibited in Florence Italy at Il Bisonte, 'one of the most beautiful workshops in Italy'. Apparently Henry Moore and Picasso printed there, so I'm in excellent company!
There is a reciprocal exhibition here in Melbourne opening in mid May, so that we locals can get to see and appreciate the prints from our Italian counterparts. All very exciting!

Lichen.

   This fascinating garden of lichen was on the weather side of a couple of Silver Birch trees.

                                             What an amazing display of the colour green.

                                   The lichen here were on branches of some kind of Cyprus.

Something Completely Different.

 While tidying up my computer files I came across these photos in the Blog Folder, photos that I didn't share when I originally took them. This Echidna in the back garden was busily trying to undermine the plant in the wire cage.

 Whilst Echidnas bury themselves immediately they see you coming, the back of this one was still completely out of the ground, so that the spines in amongst the fur are clearly seen.

This is another animal down at the edge of the creek where there is still some green vegetation, unlike in  the garden where it's very dry, just waiting for winter rain.

Beetle Combination Sun Prints.

 With my effort to use up all the various colours that I have of the aging Solarfast printing medium I have been mixing colours together, which I now know isn't a very good idea as I am getting all the various shades of mud! I might end up painting over these prints with transparent inks in an effort to improve them, but for the moment these are some of the results of another printing session.

 I have layered the beetle transparencies over my previous foliage prints, but the results on the whole are underwhelming, although parts of them might prove usable.

            This is the small circular transparency printed first with the larger one on top.

             Here the same one is printed twice, but moved slightly to reveal the first image.

 The larger beetle transparency was printed first in this one, with the smaller one on top, taking care to have a large beetle in the middle.

Beetle Patterns.

 The pattern above was made using the rubber stamp beetle as a Photoshop brush. It was more or less just a doodle, so I placed the beetles by eye, which you can see was not quite an accurate placement. I went ahead and made a transparency of it anyway, as I want to make some sun prints and I might only want to use part of the image anyway.

Here I've placed the scanned image of the rubber stamp beetle as accurately as I could, using the grid marks in Photoshop. The smaller beetles were paced by eye and are again not quite in the right spots. The image was inverted to show white beetles on a black background which will print out in reverse again when making sun prints.

New Stamp

 It was back to the beetles this afternoon with these two different sized weevils, here drawn onto the SoftCut blocks ready for carving.

   I decided to tackle the bigger one first to get an idea of the problem spots, and there are plenty!

              First stamped image, which isn't too bad, but I wonder where the eyes should be.

There are local weevils that are black with bright blue markings, so just for fun I added blue to the spots on the back. Perhaps as well as eyes, it needs more bigger white spots that can be made blue.

Making Way for Power Lines.

Walking along the street recently I was taken by the symmetry of these power lines stretching through the gap where the trees had been cut back to allow them through. The local trees have weird shapes as a result!

More Colours.

I don't know the name of this plant, but the combination of colours of the flowers seemed to fit right in with my multi coloured sun prints. So many variations of pink and yellow on one plant!

But Wait There's More!

 With the sunny weather continuing with our Indian Summer I was able to get a few more prints done. I'm delighted with the results of the layering of foliage and paint, and only need time to print many more.

 This above is quite subtle with the less strident colours, but it's a delicate balance of soft foliage and paler colours.

   Another one that is just that bit different, with less distinct foliage colours for the second layer.

                              This isn't all that interesting, so it might get a third colour.

Little Surprise!

On opening the garage door this morning I spotted this little Marbled Gecko on the concrete floor. With such a fat tail he/she must have been feeding well, but it was so cold on the concrete that it didn't/couldn't make a move.

A Touch of Orange.

 I felt as if a couple of the prints from yesterday were rather dull, so I used up some old orange ink that had been sitting around for decades and painted all over them both. I certainly think that it adds a bit of a glow to the prints, and improves them quite a lot.

It looks as if I missed the lower left bit of this image, but for some reason the ink here didn't give very good coverage. Still, I probably wouldn't use this section of the image anyway, so it doesn't matter at all.

Just a Few More!

 I'm still playing around with over printing some of my earlier sun prints, with some interesting results. This as you can see is one with small fern fronds, over printed with similar fronds.

 Here the first print was with a very narrow leafed Acacia and then over printed with Grevillia leaves.

This very strange first print was from a negative that I made of a specimen box of various sized butterflies, then overprinted with the same narrow leafed Acacia and Grevillia. As I will probably only use parts of these prints, even this odd one might be handy.