A Bit of a Failure.

 

Yesterday I made a few attempts to print from the Tetra Pak collagraph plate that I  made a little while ago. Only one was worth writing about and it unfortunately I had the sand sprinkled on far too thickly, so that the lower half of this plate was a mess. However, I quite liked the top half, seeing a couple of birds and the tree tops buffeted by wind.

 

The inverse in Photoshop is interesting, but only vaguely! In cleaning the plate after this session, some of the sand was scrubbed off, so it might be worth having another try at printing with it. Or I could just start again and cut out more motifs from the old embossed wallpaper that I bought at a street market.

Stencil and Collograph.

 Somewhere I saw a video or read a blog about using a stencil and moulding paste to make a collagraph plate.  I recently bought a small stencil of a rocky wall and decided to try the technique. I also decided to use some textured paper for the sky area, but as soon as I glued it in place I could see that it was wrong!

  Here I'm using just part of the stencil, having first cut the solid edges to make them a bit thinner.

 Well the wall worked nicely, so I added some sawdust to the foreground, but the textured paper was even more wrong now.

I managed to get most of it off, so I went ahead and glued some pressed lichen  below the wall.

While applying glue to stick down some more vegetation, I found that it lifted the remains of the paper! Now to seal it all and try printing in a few days time.

The Moon.

 In the early hours of this morning here there was an eclipse of the moon, added to which it was a so called 'Blood Moon'. Unfortunately by the time I went out to photograph it, the moon was obscured by trees and I missed out this time. The photo above was taken during a previous eclipse, when the moon was in a far better part of the sky to take  photos.

                     Not an eclipse this time, but a dramatic full moon with scudding clouds.

             Another photo of a full moon taken from on board a ship somewhere in the Baltic Sea.

The End!

After a beak of some time I have eventually returned to finish off this piece of reverse applique. As I said in a previous post, I would rather have the whole thing in a vertical position, but I think that the design dictates that it should be horizontal.  Click on the image to see a slight enlargement.

New Printing Technique.

 I have been so busy with other things recently that I haven't had a moment to print this month's chosen flower, or anything else for that matter. The flower chosen was Cherry Blossom, a reflection of a visit to Japan that the person doing the choosing had made just recently. I've wanted to try watercolour monoprinting for a while, and this is my first attempt. I've masked off the edges of an acrylic plate and adhered underneath a picture that I Photoshopped from the background of an old calendar.

 I wanted to try out the transferring of a watercolour painting on plastic to paper, so here I've painted the background a light green. I really liked the way that the paint beaded up to give some texture.

 Next I mixed up an assortment of pink paint, from very dark to quite light and also some brown for the branches. I painted over each of the flowers, leaving some white of the paper to show through in the middle of each one, and a fairly loose coverage of brown on the branches. I also added a touch of yellow in the centre of each blossom.

The resulting print is very pale and delicate, with a sort of crackling effect on the solid patches of colour. It's quite suitable for the delicate cherry blossom, but next time I will brush the paint on a bit more heavily and see what effect that achieves. At least I have now printed the flower/s for July.

Kite Flying.

                                            Oh the joys of flying a kite made by yourself!

              This one started out as an old plastic shower curtain, see the blue water drops!

A Long Weekend Away.

 It is Winter I know, but seeing the dam frozen over is quite unusual, only seen 3 times in the past 18 years. Here the surrounding bush is reflected in a spot of open water where a rock thrown in by a junior member of the family has broken the ice.

Later in the day after the sun had warmed the cold air we were thrilled to be able to mount a nest box on one of the trees that we had planted ourselves some years ago. Previously they have been too spindly to support the weight of a big nest box, but not so now.  This box could soon be home to a Bobuck (Mountain Brushtail possum), a Common Brushtail possum or a family of Ringtail possums.

Tetra Pak Collagraph.

 I read online about the use of Tetra Paks in collagraph work, so I decided to try the technique out. You use the inside of the pack, as it has a waterproof lining which can be peeled off easily.  I cut several long thin strips randomly and at various angles and peeled off the silver lining. I then cut out bits of an image from an old roll of embossed wall paper, sticking the vegetation over the cut out strips. For a bit of fun I stamped a commercial stamp of some sea gulls onto light weight cardboard and stuck them in the 'sky' area. Then to add a bit of texture I sprinkled sand randomly across the lower part of the collagraph.

You can see the sand more clearly in this picture as I have coated the whole piece with 2 layers of shellac to seal it which gives the yellow/orange colour. This will sit and dry for a few days, or weeks, before I attempt a print from it.

Horizontal or Vertical?

It suddenly occurred to me that the large motifs on the fabric that are very prominent, are what seems to the eye to be so asymmetrical, but what if I put the whole thing into a horizontal mode. Then the other smaller parts of the design that aren't symmetrical don't jump out as being so. In fact I quite like the difference in the design elements on each side of the central motif. I do prefer the vertical format, but on balance this is perhaps a better way to go.  No need to decide yet however!

More Stitching & Cutting.

The central motif is not symmetrically placed on the background fabric,  and the pattern on the background fabric is not completely symmetrical either, so choosing what to stitch and cut out is slightly problematic. I have located some squares of the pattern that are more or less equidistant from the main design to work on, and if you don't look too closely, they more or less balance out. You might just be able to see a couple of pins marking the next areas that I think need stitching and cutting out.

Gorgeous Galahs!

 I spotted this flock of Galahs on the roadside during my morning walk today. They seemed to be enjoying the fallen Plane tree fruits.

                      This is only part of the flock that I estimated to number about 20 birds.