Second Time Try.

 Using the same collagraph plate that I printed in mono colour a little while ago, I decided  to vary the colours in the latest printing session. This one above is the second one after printing the one below, so that the residue of the yellow has come through the blue in places. I quite like the lighter look, but others have said that they prefer the 'earthier' colours of the first one, below.

I used brown and yellow ink in this application, but there was sufficient blue left from the previous printing done some days ago, to change the bright yellow to a greenish yellow. Personally, I don't like the colour!

Print and Stitch.

 I really don't think that this will print very well as some of the elements are thicker than others and will collect ink around the rim.  Anyway, I went ahead and stamped some of my carved flowers onto thin card, marked the details with a sharp stylus and glued them into place. Next to coat the plate with shellac.

It is also time for another monthly beetle, this time the group chose green as the colour, either for the background or for the beetle. I did both, a green background and also some green highlights on the beetle. I used my carved rubber stamp leaves as well as a carved beetle.

Collagraph Plate.

 I painted the empty piece of cardboard with a texture paste containing blended fibres to give the background of this plate some texture. I then stamped some of my pots and jugs series of carved rubber stamps onto thin cardboard, cut them out and glued them into place. I added texture with a small engraving tool and painted gloss medium onto the highlights. Next I was trying to find some vegetation that might be used to fit into the containers. These pressed leaves didn't seem quite right.

     These flowers were pressed some 18 years ago, I knew that they'd come in handy one day!

 Someone gave me some emu feathers years ago and here I've used  several in the composition. The colour of the feathers isn't the colour that you see in the photo, the feathers have been used for printing on another occasion and still show the colour that I used then.

Now for some leaves that might work O.K It's hard to gauge just what a print might look like, as the colours that you see here are misleading, as the ink used to print the plate is the only colour that will be finally seen. I'm hoping that the textures on all these things will be sufficient to make a nice print, but I still have a way to go before that stage.

Digging Dingoes.

This month's work for the Australian Christmas Carol project, 8 dingoes digging. Once again as in previous month's images, I have used my own photograph for the background and my hand carved  stamp for the animal depicted. This picture was taken in the Northern Territory, where dingoes are common. It was quite difficult to carve a stamp where the dingo actually looks as if it is digging, but I think it worked O.K. and I used Photoshop to change the size, colour and orientation of the animal. Next month I will tackle 7 Possums Playing.

Lovely Water Wall.

 This wonderful display of plants, all in little tubs of soil and water is on the end of a blank wall of a local garage.There are so many lovely plants here, all doing very well indeed.

There is a mixture of succulents, perennials and even small shrubs, all combining to make a great display.  The water tickles down through the plants, collects in a trough at the bottom and is recycled up again. What a spectacular way to brighten up an otherwise blank wall.

Botanic Gardens Walk.

 As a member of our Royal Botanic Gardens Photo Group, our brief this month was to photograph some of the buildings within the gardens.This is one side of an old rest house called The William Tell Rest House.

 This fancy little 'cupola' is pure decoration, nothing functional at all, but it just finishes off the shelter  beautifully.

                                                          This one is from the other side.

 The Plant and Craft Cottage dates from early in the garden's history and has recently been refurbished. Walking up behind the building I rather liked these old chimneys, the lichen covered slate roof and the rather odd flashing where the chimney joins onto the roof.

                              This is one of a pair of narrow decorative windows in the cottage.

An outside wall panel in another rest house. Goodness knows how long it would have taken craftsmen to make these wooden panels.

Encounter with a Kangaroo!

Driving on country roads as we often do, we are always on the look out for kangaroos. They are usually to be seen on the edges of the roads at dawn and dusk, but lately, because of the drought they are on the move at other times of the day, feeding on the grass at the road edges that seem to stay green longer than the grass in the paddocks. Unfortunately they can be very big and if they hop in front of the car when driving, apart from ramming on the brakes there is nothing you can do, except hope that the animal is killed outright and that it doesn't come through the windscreen into your lap!
This is the second time in 6 months that we have encountered a kangaroo on the road with the resulting damage to the front of the car as is shown in my photo above.  Luckily we weren't hurt and the car was drive-able with the addition of a lot of gaffer tape. Thankfully the kangaroo was not just badly injured but killed, as a badly injured kangaroo requires professional help, which is not available in remote areas. Dead kangaroos are often seen on the edges of the highway, and given the damage that a hit at 70 km/hr as seen above can cause, I can't image the damage to people and cars at the 110 km/hr and above that the cars travel at on the highways. We were very lucky not to have been injured.

Collagraph Printing.

 Here are 3 of the prints that I made from the large plate that I made a few days ago. Unfortunately I discovered that the pieces of lace were really too thick to ink up and wipe off easily, but it's all a learning process. This one above is probably the best of the print run with a reasonable contrast of light and dark.

 This one is perhaps a little too dark, but the contrast between the blue and white of the 'flowers' on the far left looks good I think, even if the white is technically a fault!

                                               Too pale and uneven coverage in this one.

I really like these lace shapes and they emboss well too. I might cut up the better parts of this one for another collagraph collage at some stage.

Sunset.

            What an amazing sunset we had last night, seen here through the foliage of a street tree.

Inversion, as Usual.

 Once again I have had fun with the 'invert' command in Photoshop. The filter inverts the colours in an original image, and sometimes the results are quite different to what one might expect.

These are the stamped eco dyed papers that I posted about previously that I've given the invert filter treatment to. I really like the results, particularly in the first one of these images. I think that they'd both make nice cards.

Ready to Go.

 Here is the collagraph plate all painted with shellac and ready for printing. As it's quite a big plate, I can't print it at home as I don't have a press that is able to handle plates this size, so I will have to go over to the printing studio next week.

 I'm a little concerned that some of the components of the plate are too bulky and will be difficult to ink up, but I'm keen to give it a try.

I carved several different variety of eucalyptus tree seed pods last year and used them in a little book that I made. Here I've used a couple of them over the eco printed papers that I made last week. I also added a few areas of water colour wash to add a little more interest. I might make another book with these and some more over stamped eco papers when I have time.

Fun with Collagraphs.

 I thought that it was about time that I constructed a new collagraph plate, something quite different to those that I had made in the past. I started out by pasting a sheet of textured paper that I had made a few years ago onto a sheet of cardboard. It throws the composition out a bit by being already coloured.  I added vegetation, cicada wings, pressed grasses, motifs cut from lace, pressed bougainvillea 'petals',   feathers and a some open weave fabric. I hope that the background paper has enough texture to show up in the final print.

          Just for fun I inverted the colours of the photo of the plate in Photoshop. Isn't it pretty?

I also made an image in black and white, just to see how it looked, as the coloured background paper  is somewhat of a distraction from the composition.

That's Better!

 This latest eco dyeing of paper is a lot more interesting than the previous attempt. This time I left out the rusty screws etc, although I did continue to use the pieces of rusty aviary wire at either end of the paper and vegetation sandwich. I wondered if there was sufficient tannin in acorns to give some colour to the dye. Since it's autumn here in the southern hemisphere, there are plenty of acorns around from the oaks that have been planted as street trees, and yes they do give some colour.

 Although called a Silky Oak, these leaves are not from an oak at all, but from a type of native Grevillea. In the flowering season it has bunches of spiky bright yellow flowers.

 Here are some broad leaved eucalyptus leaves, with some finer ones from another species showing through from the other side of the paper.

                      More broad leaved and narrow leaved eucalyptus on the same side of the paper.

    In this one I used a couple of petals from a bright yellow hibiscus with some small oak leaves.

                                                                A piece of bracken fern.

Eco Paper Dyeing

 After boiling up some watercolour paper with bits of rusty metal, I was hoping for something a bit more interesting than these results. The marks here are from a piece of rusty metal aviary wire, with bits of vegetation sandwiched between the pages.

 This one had a Tibouchina flower sandwiched with a large oak leaf.  The deep colour of the flower is interesting, but the outline is very indistinct and the oak leaf very pale.

This is the best of the batch, a better outline of the flower, and the blue colour has interestingly enough migrated under one leaf of the spray of leaves. I'll over dye the rest of the pages as they are very disappointing in colour and imagery.

Almost There.

 Carving the rubber block was not as difficult as I imagined, however this first print shows that a little more cleaning up is required. I had intended cutting off the solid area at the lower end, but I might just narrow it down a bit. Some of the 'letters' would also benefit from being cut away from the ones above and below.

I trialed the block on thin copy paper, and the ghost print on the reverse is quite nice too, very subtle.

More Carving.

 I recently discovered printmaker Anne Moore online and immediately bought her book Art Under Pressure. I wasn't disappointed in the book when it arrived, it's full of very interesting pictures of her prints and also quite a detailed section of The Process with pictures of Anne at work. One thing immediately jumped out at me, one that I just had to try, although I chose to use my soft rubber rather than lino, was the pseudo script. Above is my take on the idea, but I must confess that I have copied some of Anne's interesting symbols, others are my own

Here I've just started to carve out the symbols. I have chosen to have them print black (or any other colour) rather than white, which means I need to carve the background away, not carve the symbols themselves out. A bit of a challenge I think, but it should be easier with the rubber than with the lino that Anne used.

Aussie Christmas Carol for May.

       Time for a new image for the year long monthly Australian  9 Days of Christmas challenge.
Using a photo that I took in East Africa some 10 years ago, I carved my crocodile stamp this week and set about adding 9 crocodiles to the background. I'm sure that you'll say that there are only 8, but look carefully on the back left bank where a distant croc is sunning itself. The verse says that the crocodiles are snoozing, and in fact they do often snooze with open mouths, so all of these are open mouth croc snoozers!