Textures

While waiting for the delivery of some more alcohol inks I started browsing through my photos for some art ideas. These random textures caught my eye, so I thought that I might share a few of them.

   Above is a pattern formed by ice on some leaves resulting in some amazingly regular ridges.

 Something caught and killed this bird or found it dead, leaving behind these beautifully patterned wing feathers. More detail can be seen by clicking on the image..

                                             More ice patterns on the window of my car.

                       A bundle of protective plastic fencing left behind by some workmen.

                                                          Some really heavy duty chains.

                                  Lastly some rusting metal underneath the surface skin.

Further Ink Play.

 It's very therapeutic this playing with alcohol inks! One can keep fiddling away indefinitely I think, or at least until the paper is absolutely full and saturated.

 Here is a detail of the piece shown above. I really like parts of it, but I'm not sure about the thing as a whole.

Another section in which I inadvertently changed the orientation by mistake for the photo. It's the upper left hand corner rotated a quarter turn to the left.

Alcohol Inks

I've long admired the art work that people produce using alcohol inks, and at long last I've got started on the technique myself. I now admire the artists using this medium even more, as it's much more difficult than I thought to produce anything remotely 'artistic'!

 

                                                                     My first attempt.

 It's quite mesmerising watching the inks travel on the non porous paper, blending and changing as they move.

This is a portion of a much larger piece that I'm fiddling around with, outlining in white ink and seeing what happens when I go back into the various colours with alcohol ink pens. It's fascinating !

Weird Stuff!

 I take photos where ever I go, anything that takes my fancy as being pretty, interesting, and also weird.  This is a selection of what might be called interesting, but perhaps weird to some people's way of thinking. Above is an old doll's head found nestling in amongst the weeds and fallen timber in the bush. I wonder what her story is!

 To an Australian interested in native plants this photo above may not be weird at all.  It's the seed capsules of a Banksia plant arranged on a central 'candle'.

 I thought that this above looked pretty weird, a tree root on the forest floor being held captive by several thinner roots. It looks as if the thick root is being pinned down by all the thinner roots.

                                           A pair of koala skulls minus the lower mandibles.

                                            The contorted skeleton of a long dead kangaroo.

Last Attempt.

I decided to have one last attempt at a watercolour transfer print from an acrylic sheet, this time I coated it with Gum Arabic before painting instead of using detergent. It worked very much better, and I quite like the less than perfect transfer of the paint to the leaves. The transfer has picked up the subtle texture of the hot pressed water colour paper, so I wonder how the transfer would go on a totally smooth paper.  Next time!

Watercolour Tranfer Printing

 Having had moderate success with printing the cherry blossoms from an acrylic plate to paper last month, I thought that I would try the next flower that was chosen by the group by the same method.
The jonquil, or more correctly known as the narcissus, was lot more tricky to get a reasonable image.

On the left is the transfer from the watercolour, painted onto acrylic, and pressed onto damp mixed media paper. The flowers are more or less O.K., but the leaves are very messy.

On the right is the image that was made the same way, except that I coated the acrylic sheet with undiluted wash-up detergent first to try and stop the beading up of the watercolour paint. It certainly addressed that problem, and made a big difference.  I also used the paint from tubes much more thickly, rather than more dilute from pan paints.

  

Here on the left I went over the image with a slightly wet brush, no paint, just water. It certainly improved the leaves, but I'm not sure that I like the 'bleeding' of the colour where the paper was obviously not blotted off enough before transfer. This will do for the monthly flower image, but I need to experiment with the technique further I think.

The Last Photos from Warburton.

 Some one got serious about keeping the wallabies, kangaroos and cockatoos out of their vegetable garden, but then forgot to grow any vegetables!

 I spotted this whimsical house while out walking one day.  I just love the copper hood over the window and the flower pattern in the wall is most unusual.

The front door of the same house is highly decorated too, and the huge Blue Wren on it's stand is a dominant feature on the way up to the entrance.

More from Warburton.

 A very interesting plaque set into the ground in front of a private home, with no  sign of a Pine tree, from Aleppo or anywhere else!

                                                Is this a shelter for an amazing BBQ area?

                     A very good looking Kookaburra, but a not so good photograph unfortunately.

A Few Days in the Mountains.

 I've just spent a few days away in Warburton at a country retreat that we return to every year, or at least we have for the past 4 years. This below is the scene at the back of the house, a steep pathway with the mountains beyond.

 At the front of the house is the winding road that is lovely to walk along in the early morning, but so far we haven't seen one wombat, even though motorists are warned to keep an eye out for them.

Some of the group hard at work on their various projects in front of the lovely log fire off to the left of the photo.

New Stamps.

Continuing with my theme of beetles, I've just added 2 new ones to the collection, a Long Horned Beetle on the left and a weevil on the right of the paper. Unfortunately the position of the legs of the Long Horned beetle makes it look as if it's dead!

Grey Melbourne.

   On a grey winter's day this is the view of the distant city of Melbourne from our local park.

In the city this time, crossing the river Yarra with the city buildings on the right and the Southbank restaurant strip on the left and further round out of sight the arts precinct with the galleries, theatres and music venues.

Inside our wonderful Recital Centre with it's warm honey coloured wood walls and ceiling, all carved to promote the best acoustics from anywhere in the entire theatre.

 It's still grey and overcast at the docks end of the Yarra River, here looking towards the bridge from which the second photo was taken.