11 Numbats Nagging.

Here is the second in my Aussie Christmas series, with the eleven Nagging Numbats. I carved the numbat stamp from SoftCut rubber as usual, but added the pale colour of the body patches digitally. With an uneven number of nagging numbats, I've designed 3 animals having a group nag in the background!

12 days of Christmas!

Well, it's a long time until next Christmas, however another group that I belong to have decided to work a new piece each month, to the theme of the 12 Days of Christmas.
A couple of us wanted to use the Australian version of the carol, and I also decided to work backwards from 12 to 1. There are at least 5 different versions of the Australian carol, so I was free to pick and choose the animals that appealed to me most.
This  photo is of 12 Frilled Neck lizards running, on a background of the Bungle Bungle Ranges in the Northern Territory.
I hand carved a stamp of the lizard, scanned a copy into the computer and made it into various sizes to fit the A5 size paper.
I used my own photo taken from a light plane while flying over the Ranges.

Light & Dark.

Using an old collagraph plate I printed off these two versions. The first print, the one above, was a little too dark, but had some lovely effects when viewed close up. Click on the image to enlarge it. I think that with the addition of a 'roll up' in white, it will be much improved.

The 'ghost' print above is really interesting, and in some respects I prefer it to the dark one. Again, click on the image to view it enlarged. I think that the area on the far left has worked very well, with a good contrast between the lights and darks.

Ammonites etc.

I'm not at all sure how this collagraph plate will work out, but I'll give it a try tomorrow and hope that I can get at least one 'interesting' print from it. The background is a piece of cardboard that I sprayed with some very old webbing spray. I'm hoping that there will be enough texture in it to give some interest to the plate. The weeds are texture paste spread through a commercial stencil, and the ammonites and trilobites are my hand carved stamps coated in texture paste and stamped.I think that I'll have to be very careful in wiping the ink from this one, as it will be very easy to over wipe and leave no dark areas.

All Caught Up.

As I hadn't done the 'bug' (beetle) for February in time to take to the group meeting, I also now had the colour to be featured for the March insect. I didn't waste time, I just got on and did it!
This weevil is more of a coppery gold in real life, but the required turquoise is about a true colour. Again I have used my own carved stamps for the beetle and leaves, working over the print with machine stitching and adding paint for the solid colour of the weevil.

Textile Again.

Taking a break from printing, I have just finished this beetle piece shown above.  A group that I belong to decided on the theme of Bugs for the year, and as it's still summer, the colours yellow, orange and red were required to be part of the finished piece. The original theme was to be comical bugs, but my mind doesn't work that way, and so I worked a realistic beetle instead. I wasn't the only one, as at least one other person also made a realistic textile version of the challenge, hers was of a Harlequin Bug with it's red and black colouration. The colours of my hand dyed cotton in the background are much brighter than shown in the photo. I used my own hand carved stamps for the beetle image and the leaves which I then stamped onto the cloth and stitched over on the sewing machine. The colour for the next one is to be a turquoise blue, with one piece of a different colour each month to follow.

First Print.

This is the first print from the collagraph plate that I made a couple of weeks ago. I'm happy with this print, although being critical of my work as usual, I can see several areas that aren't quite what I'd hoped for. The yellowing of the paper at the top is a variation in the available light, not  discolouration of the paper.

Accidental Art.

 While trying out various inks on my little 'mirror baby' stamp I found that one of the lino printing inks had separated out with a layer of oil at the top of the tube. I squeezed it out, disposed of the excess oil and attempted to roll out a dollop onto a tile and get it ready for applying to the stamp. However, try as I might, the ink kept separating out into an oily slick. I rolled the brayer through it, trying to even it out, but to no avail. Then when I was cleaning it all up, rolling the brayer onto the back of a reject print, I ended up with these patterns where the ink had continued to separate out on the roller. Fascinating!

               A click on the image will enlarge it so you can see the fine details of the pattern.

                                                               Some butterflies perhaps?

Testing.

 This was the first print from the stamp that I showed previously. The underarm gouge is very evident even though I attempted to fill it in with a small piece of rubber. The surface was not even enough for the ink to take properly at all.

In this one I cheated and filled the gap in with a paint brush and printing ink, but the ink was a bit thick for the rest of the body, so that most of the fine markings have been lost. I can go back and work into them a little more so that they show up better, and I also need to even out the carving of the hair. I wonder if it's worth persevering!

Maybe, or Maybe Not.

I thought that I would transfer this little boy and his mirror to a piece of carving rubber in order to make a stamp. I'm not at all sure that it will work out or not, but there is only one way to find out.......
to get carving.

Variations.

 This is the first stage in a collograph plate featuring my 2 little mirror boys. Unfortunately I don't have any carborundum, so I have tried using fine sand for the dark areas, but I'm not sure that it is going to give me smooth darkness that I want. I have also used gloss medium for the mirror and the light areas of the bodies, matt medium for the mirror surround and the yellow colour on the background is shellac over rough cardboard where the top layer has been peeled off. I need to put the in floor line too before a trial print tomorrow.

Here is the same image using a different technique, a Thermofax screen made with a Gocco machine. I had to reduce the size of the image to 80% of the original size to fit into the available area, but that was no problem with a photo copier.Yet another version to try out.

Art at Last.

 Having been very busy with 'life', I've managed to get back to some art at long last. This is an etched acrylic sheet placed on a black card to show up the line work. Two little boys admiring their images in a mirror from a photograph taken many years ago. I have a feeling that the lines aren't deep enough to make a good print, but there are lots of ways to address this problem. It's all hand etched as my electric engraver is too heavy for such fine work.

This is a digitally enhanced copy of a print, reversed to look like the original image. The hand of the older child is a bit odd, but it's the rear view that I was particularly interested in, so cute !

Not Fire Thank Goodness.

 With the horrible hot weather that we have had recently, the bush fires have been raging all over the continent. These photos however don't show fires, but amazing sunsets, probably because of the smoke in the air.

The bands of colour in this picture are interesting, but unfortunately there is no vantage point that I can take a photo without the foreground trees.