Another Try.

 Although this print looks a bit odd, I think that once I add all the shades of orange and yellow of the original bracket fungus photo,  it might come up quite well.(see earlier photo)

Here I've tried the fish collagraph again, this time making more of a contrast between the fish and the background. I have lost some of the details on the fish, but it doesn't really matter.  As someone pointed out to me, the scales on a fish really aren't that clear when it's underwater anyway.It's only a test plate, so if I recreate it, I'll take the white 'bubble' area completely to the edges of the plate.

More Collagraph Plates.

 This print above is a bit of a failure, but it's interesting because I used old fashioned powdered starch mixed with water to make the marks. It turned out that the marks were too thick to print well.

This one is a better result, fine sandpaper cut with scalloped scissors, and marks made into Impasto Gel Medium.

Printing.

                   A few of the sample texture prints from my previously made collagraph plates.

This print is the result of draping gauze over the plate, gluing it in place and adding a few pieces of pressed ferns. It's quite an interesting plate, one that I need to refine and try again. I'll fill in the space at the top right with a small piece of gauze, and perhaps add another coat of shellac to make the gauze take up a little less ink.

New Collagraph Plates.

 This is a selection of new collagraph plates that I sealed with shellac today, a couple are very old texture plates for more simple printing, but others are newly constructed.

 The photo seems to show this one above with indented marks, whereas they are actually in relief. The details are very fine, so it may not print well at all. Click on the photo for a slight enlargement to see the details of cracking that I was trying to get.

Here some gel medium was painted through a 'stone' stencil and I have added pressed 'shivery' grass for the trees, dried pressed lichen for the foreground vegetation with very fine sawdust right at the front. This is a detail of  the larger plate shown in the collection above, but I have a feeling that it won't make a particularly good print.

Next Project.

 While I haven't given up on my little sad boy portrait, I will return to it shortly, I needed to move on to something new. I took this photo of some Bracket Fungus many years ago, always intending to use it in some artwork.

I cut a simple mat board plate of the image and used various mediums to designate the different areas to be painted. The print on the right is a little pale, but I will go ahead and paint it, even if it is just to see where the different shades of orange and yellow will go.

A Little Better.

Although this print is a little too dark, the very distinct tone across the face is much better after using some sandpaper on it.  I need to deal with the hair the same way I think, it's too 'blobby', and I also need to blur the sanded and non sanded areas of the forehead. Getting there !

Oooooooooops !

 The poor child looks as if he has had a nasty accident !  The gauche paint that I had hoped would be a tone between the shiny gel medium and the unpainted mat board ended up being a much stronger resist than I expected. I'll try and sand paper it back a bit and see if that helps. Nothing however will help his poor skinny little arm ! I'm happy with the main features however.

A Bit More Difficult.

Now it's time to try a portrait for a collagraph plate, but I think that it might be very difficult given the number of tones that are present in the original photo. You can see from the picture on the right, just how the photo is divided up into areas of light and dark. Time to work on the plate and see just what can be done to produce the different areas, each distinct from the other. (the child in the picture is now over 50 years old!)

Adding Some Colour.

I actually wanted the water to be more green than this, so next time, if there is a next time, I'll add less blue to the mix.

Pritning the Plate.

Although the print has some nice contrasts in tone, there is a little too much white around some of the 'rocks'. Perhaps the paper wasn't damp enough to get into the narrow corners.

Collagraph Plate.

 I've chosen part of a photo that I took of rocks at the edge of a lovely bush reservoir called Polly McQuin's in the Victorian Strathbogie Ranges for a new collagraph plate.

 After tracing onto mat board I coloured in all the very dark/black areas which will be cut away, leaving a rough area to take up more ink.

I'm not quite sure how I will treat the vegetation in the middle background, so it's not delineated yet.

School Holiday Fun.

 With a creek running alongside a local park what better way to spend a morning during the school holidays than to play on the rocks, cross the creek and discover an area full of flowers.

No matter that they are all weeds, Soursob, Oxalis and some very smelly Onion weed. They all have to be picked, brought home and arranged in a vase of course.

Add a Little Metallic.

I still felt that this lacked highlights, so in I went with metallic blue, purple, silver & gold. I think that I have over done the whole piece actually, but we'll see, as I'll still keep working on it for a while yet.