Last Art for the Year!

 With the temperature totally unbearable outside at 43° C with a strong gusty wind blowing, the only thing to do was to become immersed in art for the afternoon. I'm back to the beetle imagery again, with 2 new stamps carved this afternoon and a couple of play prints using them. The one above uses the new stamps plus on old one on top of an old collagraph print. I quite like it actually, although I did only set out to play.

 

The one above is less successful, but as I was starting with a previously unsuccessful collagraph print it wasn't really surprising.

 

This one is another of my favorite inversions of the colours of the original image in Photoshop. Again, I quite like this one and it gives me ideas for another colour combination in the future.

Lucky Find!

Having dismantled our large covered vegetable garden beds, which allowed us to erect copious yardage of shade cloth,we are now left with the dilemma of how to shade our precious vegetables when the temperature hits 43° C as happened a week or so ago and is predicted to do so again tomorrow. While out walking in the cool of early evening last Sunday we came across this very large umbrella out on a 'hard rubbish' collection. The items are collected very early on a Monday morning, so it was now or never! We grabbed the umbrella and with a few modifications it is now installed over a bed of tomatoes giving much needed shade in the heat of the day.

One Year Later.

 This gorgeous Groodle pup was 13 months old when she 'caught' a brain infection and didn't respond to any treatment. Her owners were devastated especially the children aged 8 and 11, who adored their puppy. RIP Luna.

Another gorgeous Groodle, but quite different in colour and type of coat, reflecting the poodle component of her breeding. Molly has now joined the bereft family and will hopefully provide years of companionship and joy for all.

Sunny Day - Stormy Sky.

 I was intrigued by the reflection of clouds in the windows of a local office block, and as usual I inverted the colour with a Photoshop filter and ended up with the stormy skies seen below. 

With the predicted temperature the day after tomorrow being 42°C, it's wishful thinking that we could have storm clouds and rain I think.

Tiny Tree!

 Here is this year's Christmas Tree, a tiny little cypress in a pot from the plant nursery. I would have liked to add some tinsel, but I just didn't have anything that is fine enough to be in scale with this tiny tree.

Not having small people around for Christmas this year, it seemed a bit unnecessary to have our usual large pine tree. I must admit however that I miss the fresh pine smell, an essential part of Christmas for me since childhood. I do still have the little figure of father Christmas from my childhood though, here he is to the right of the big green bell.

Australian 12 Days of Christmas.

Once again, this was a group challenge, the topic of which was decided early this year. I was not at the meeting, so I didn't get my say, but I was not thrilled to hear what the challenge was. Especially since it was a textile group and I really didn't want any more textile bits and pieces lurking in the cupboards! I decided to once again use my rubber stamp carving skills and make stamps for the various animals, and to use backgrounds that were my own photographs from areas suitable for the different animals/birds/fish. There are many different versions of the Aussie 12 days of Christmas, so I chose from all of them, deciding on images that appealed to me most and were suitable to carve stamps from. Being printed on gloss paper, the end results in the photos are rather shiny, but I think with enlargement (click on above) you can see what I have done. I had a lot of fun with these, choosing the animals and sourcing the backgrounds, but I am happy to have finished them all before Christmas.

A year of Beetles.

At the beginning of the year the textile group that I belong to, set
a challenge to be completed each month on the general theme of 'bugs'. I chose beetles, and each month the group chose a colour to be either the background colour as in my case, or the colour of the bug itself.

 I first carved each beetle in a soft rubber to make a stamp and then also carved some vegetation to add to the image.
 Sometimes the colour was too dark to really use a stamped image on it, so I have stamped on some lighter fabric, cut the beetle out and appliqued it to the background.

 I have added painted colours to each insect, in some cases the paint is metallic, as in the two above. After painting, I stitched around the beetles and the leaves in simple machine stitching.

The only insect that I'm not really happy with is the red one shown on the right in the above image. The background colour was to be charcoal, hence the red beetle worked so that it shows up, but I don't like the colour or the shape of the beetle! I might even redo it sometime.

All the fabrics used were my own hand dyed ones, and it was good to find a use for some of them that were dyed many years ago.

Summer?

                                 Yesterday was the official first day of summer here in Australia.

 Whilst these photos weren't taken today or even yesterday, it feels so cold however that they might well have been!

 A few bracken fern fronds with a dusting of frost, the photos taken in what was officially Winter.

Where has My Home Gone?

 Walking in the local park this morning I was saddened to see that a big old Gum tree had been felled. We had very strong winds a day or so ago and it looked as if a large limb had broken off. I think that the arborists must have decided that the rest of the tree canopy posed a risk to anyone walking under it and therefore decided to remove the rest of the upper branches. The Rainbow Lorikeets were NOT happy!

 I usually walk with my camera, but this time I chose to only take my phone, what a mistake! The Lorikeets were screeching, landing and taking off again in a great display of agitation.

 The resulting photos are taken from too far away and therefore slightly out of focus. Moral of the story? Take a proper camera when out walking.

                      I'm not sure how many birds there are in this picture, perhaps 8 or 9.

 They are very pretty birds with colours of green, blue, orange and yellow on the body and wings.

                 The male birds are brighter than the females, but all are very striking in colour.

I suppose that they'll get used to the lack of a very large roosting and breeding tree, but for now they are pretty upset. I hate that the tree has been chopped down too, but I'm sure that it was deemed necessary by those that know about trees!

Eco-Dyeing.

 These pictures show the results of some eco- dyeing  that I have just done. The sandwich of paper was held compressed by some old aviary wire, which shows in the pattern of squares on the photo above.

 The yellow colour is from some Coreopsis flowers and the paler ones from various Geranium petals.

   More of the same combination of flowers and also some narrow leaf Peppermint Gum leaves.

                                                               More gum leaves above.

This was the paper on the outside of the bundle and the wire has really made a grid pattern.

Last One!

                         With the stamp carving and digital artwork, the series is now complete.

                 The 12 Aussie Days of Christmas, finished in good time for Christmas 2019.

Sprekelia, Maltese Cross Lily or Jockey's Cap ?

 At this time of the year these lilies always make a welcome appearance, however what to call them? I always stick to the name Sprekelia, but I have heard them called by at least 2 different names.

Although spectacular to look at, they are very hardy and multiply year after year. I can't bear to throw any of the bulbs out, so I have them in the garden and in pots and troughs all over the place.

One More to Go.

Down to number two, 2 Pink Galahs. It was quite a challenge to get the pink colour onto the birds as well as the brown branch that they are perched on and the grey wings etc. I ended up stamping the birds onto scrap paper, and making a couple of stencils, one for the branch and one for the breasts of the birds. The wings and tail were stamped in grey, then the branch through the first stencil and then the fronts of the birds through the second stencil. Since each picture is only 15 cm x 21 cm in size, the slightly misaligned stamps are not really visible. One more to go, the Emu in a Gum Tree !

Three Kookaburras.

 Above are the first prints from my carved stamp for the 3 kookaburras laughing page. The one on the right hasn't got enough white on it's front, but I'm happy with the one on the left after a little more work in the white areas.

The photo is one I took in a forest quite recently and although I didn't see any kookaburras there that day, there isn't any reason to suppose that they don't sometimes settle in those trees even though the trees aren't native to Australia.

Nearly Finished.

 With Christmas just around the corner, I will have finished  my Aussie 12 Days of Christmas digital and stamp series just in time. Above is a photo that I took looking along under the Point Lonsdale pier with my carved shark stamp added in various sizes.

This is a photo that I took of some bush that is vaguely the sort of area that one might find lyrebirds in. The stamp was quite hard to carve with the delicate tail feathers, but I think that it looks O.K in this setting. Only 3 more stamps to carve and 3 more photos to choose.

Services Resumed!

Having been overseas for 3 weeks and then spending  a couple of weeks trying to get back into the swing of things again, posting here has been very much on the back burner. However with exhibition dead lines looming I have had to try to find time for some more printmaking. I'm still fascinated by the process of collagraph making and printing, so of course that's where I made a start this week.

This fantasy butterfly was made with pressed leaves, making sure that the veins were in the appropriate place. Unfortunately parts of the leaves began breaking away after a couple of prints, but by the end of the season real butterfly wings are pretty tatty too. It's always a fine balancing line with collagraphs using natural materials, too much shellac blurs the details, too little and the elements often break off with the rubbing of the ink.

What I Saw.

 I spotted this swarm of bees while on my morning walk today, and was fascinated by the colour of the massed bee bodies.

 There appeared to be two swarms, but the beekeeper that I contacted to come and rescue the bees told me that it was all one family and that it 'hadn't got it's act together'.

He wanted to know was it a 1, 2 or more bucket operation to re-home them, hence the photographs. I imagine that it would depend on the size of the buckets!

Wonderful Wisteria.

 Whilst I have seen wonderful wisteria like this before, this particular property had masses of it.

             But I have never seen a double wisteria before like this one above and below.

Not only are the flowers so beautiful, but the colour varies from pale lilac to quite a dark shade on the same 'bunch'. An absolutely spectacular form of the climber.

Bits & Pieces.

                                         A wonderful dragonfly piece of artwork beside a pond.

                                                                  Tree snails ?

                         I wonder what this caterpillar will turn into, a moth of some sort I expect.

                                                  Wonderfully textural seaside grass.