Defeated?

 I feel as if I'm ready to give up on this  large carved stamp! I have managed to fill in the gouge that I mistakenly made under the outstretched arm, but I just can't get a good print of the little boy, his reflection and the patterned carpet under his feet.

 This isn't too bad, except that I've painted in a lot of the missed patches of ink, and unless it all dries evenly, the patching up will show, which is not a good look!

Even though I used a template to make a clear un-stamped place for the feet, I just haven't managed to do it accurately. I would be happy to leave it as it comes if the rest of the print was good, but so far none of them really are. In the photos the hair looks like an odd helmet, so maybe it's time to call defeated !

Photo Essay.

 This beautifully shaped spathe fell off a Monstera plant, and I just couldn't resist photographing it from all angles. It is about 30 cm tall, thick, fleshy and quite heavy.

                       The reverse shows the delicate green central rib on the creamy underside.

                            This view shows the indentations made by the central flower spike.

                                           A close up of the markings in the previous photo.

Collagraph Printmaking Workshop.

 What a great printmaking workshop I attended over the weekend! The workshop, given by visiting Scottish (although born and until fairly recently living in England) printmaker Sarah Ross Thompson, was a lot of concentrated hard work, but we covered such a great deal over the 2 days.

 These 3 pictures are of sample blocks, each using different collagraph techniques, from cutting into the board, adding materials and allowing the materials to extend beyond the boards.

 Below is a larger print that I made from a plate constructed on the second day of the course. There were 10 people in the class, and we were given the choice of making something purely abstract or figurative. I think that my 'alien' scene fell somewhere in between!

The colours are a somewhat different to the original, with the brown rocky area at the bottom turning blackish mauve in this picture., but it all worked out reasonably well.

Challenge Print.

When challenged to make a collagraph plate of an image that was quite different to my usual style, I decided to work on a picture of an old steam engine water pump that I had photographed some time ago. While very tricky to make, it printed quite well, showing the various rusty colours of the original pump. Please click on the above for an enlargement of the print which gives a little more detail.

Leaping Lizards.

Using a bit of digital technology, the 2 lizard stamps are now 10 little lizards of different colours, sizes and in various positions. It was actually quite difficult to have a background that the lizards could be seen against and the colour of the writing needed a bit of thinking about too.  I tried, orange, yellow, red and green writing, but the white showed up the best of all. The background is actually a photo of our drought stricken back lawn!

New Stamps.

I took  a break from Collagraph printing when I realised that I needed to go onto the next in the Australian Christmas Carol series This will be 10 Lizards Leaping, so here are the 2 images of newly carved lizard stamps.

I used a different type of carving rubber for this one and bitterly regretted it, as it's very soft and crumbly, resulting in a break to the tip of the lizards tail..  I have glued the piece back in place, but it's still very obvious, but as the images will be reduced quite a lot for the final piece, I don't think that it will actually show.

Challenge!

As a reader of this Blog, you would probably guess that I prefer to photograph and make artwork based on the natural world. However a challenge was issued to make a print based on something quite different to the images that I would naturally choose. This is a photo on the left that I took of an old water pump that used to pump water into steam engines. It was situated on the side of an old railway line and I was attracted to the lovely old patina and colours of the artifact. Making a printing plate of it however is a really big challenge and I'm not at all sure that it will work out. On the right is the plate so far, with a long way yet to go.

Water.

 How lovely to see water in this creek, even though the level is well below what it usually is.
                               The exposed roots on the bank make an interesting picture.

          A little rocky outcrop with purple/pink loose-strife growing on the banks of the creek.

Water still flowing over the rocks, but not the rushing 'white water' that it sometimes is in the middle of winter.

Early Morning Walk.

 I have photographed this tree over many years, in winter fog, spring fresh air and many other different times of the year. In a previous drought, the tree made a last desperate effort to throw out lots of seeds in case it died itself. Luckily such a magnificent old tree didn't die and now it is surrounded by a ring of saplings that have germinated from the seeds.   The smoke haze from distant bush fires is just visible beyond the tree. The once lush paddock grass is now burnt dry.

 The winding track is usually bordered by bracken fern, but they too, tough as they are, have died back in the drought.

Early morning shadows on the track, with a fallen tree to hop over. No trouble for the dog of course!

Drought

 With almost no rain since the beginning of the year and not much for the last few months of last year, the area around our little bush house is looking very dry and parched.

 All the brownish green patches in the foreground are patches of moss on the rocks, which may or may not ever return to it's lovely lush winter green colour.

                                   Piles of dead parched fallen trees on the side of the track.

There is a creek running from left to right in the foreground which is now completely dry. The water does run under ground for quite some distance if there is actually water down there, but sadly I don't think that there is any more.

Another Collagraph.

                                         
Today I  constructed a new plate over the top of an older one that didn't have enough texture to print properly. This one almost erred the other way with a lot of shiny transparent texture from the texture paste, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the above print was really interesting with a few elements of the previous plate showing through, making for quite a complex image. The off white colour of the printing paper also enhanced the image, as rather than showing stark white though the gaps in colour, a softer white added a nice light to the print I think.

Another Collagraph.

A new print from an old collagraph plate. I thought that this print was a little too light when it first came off the press, but I ended up much preferring it to the more heavily inked versions that I subsequently printed.