Not Wasting Paper!

 With the business of Christmas Day and Boxing Day behind me I took the opportunity to do some more gelatine plate printing. I have a huge stack of prints that I've made over the weeks and months, but most of them aren't anything special at all, so I have been trying to over print them rather than make new prints from scratch. I'm not using expensive printing paper, but even so I can't bear to waste pieces of paper by throwing them out if the image is not up to scratch. Below are some prints made over the top of older ones.

Molly at Christmas

Molly the Groodle (Poodle x Golden retriever) was not very impressed by Christmas festivities I don't think! Being my daughter's dog she is allowed on the furniture, unlike my own dog, Sophie, who is not.

A Wonderful Metal Bug, A Tiny Christmas Tree & A Wall of Blooms at the Firestation Print Gallery.

Having a Lot of Fun with the Gelatine Plate Printing.

Gelatine Plate Printing with Vegetation.

Garden Delights.

Printing Backgrounds.

The Beautiful Fringed Lily Growing Wild in the Bush and a Fluffy Little Moth.

Prints from this Week, (but impossible to add text in current Blogger format!)

Birds and Flowers

Additions.

The print above suggested a cave wall to me, so harking back to prehistoric people living in caves, I made a few tiny hand shapes and dabbed paint around them. Those people of course used their own hands for the shapes and blew ochre over them with their mouths.  I used a tiny sponge instead as I didn't fancy filling my mouth with paint!

This piece of art could have stood on its own, but I rather liked the little bit of orange that appeared in places, so I added a lot more orange water colour paint. I think that it's a definite improvement.
 

Further Variations.

Having discovered the possibilities of this particular technique, I just can't stop playing around with it. This one above suggests a cave wall to me, so I need to carve some petroglyphs or perhaps some stenciled hand prints.

         This one is definitely snake skin, so for now I'm researching snake skeleton pictures!

                    This I think is some sort of terrain as seen from above, a rocky desert perhaps.
 

Variations.

It's taken me a whole week to get back to art work and posting the results. Even though we are still in lock down and unable to travel further than 5 Km from home, there always seems to be a lot to do in the house and particularly in the garden.

These 4 prints from my home made gelatin plate will form backgrounds for further images, although some of the total group I rather like just as they are. This one above reminds me of a grove of bamboo stems.

                                     I'm not sure what the print above suggests, cliffs perhaps.

 This one above looks rather like some of our desert scenery as seen from above. I think that the dark shadow in the middle is actually the shadow of a tree outside the window that was giving me the light for the photo.

Gelatin Plate, Resists and Stamps.

        I've called this piece The Dance, although the figures are perhaps more gymnasts than dancers.

    It actually all worked out better than I expected, which is unusual with this vastly variable art form!
 

Stamps.

Having decided that I need some small stamps to add to the larger figures in the gelatin plate prints, I started to carve a few of the more interesting poses. I have finished the three above, but I'll probably make 2 or 3 more.

This is the test sheet with the first stamped image of each design and the subsequent improvements.  Some of the limbs are a bit odd, but that's the nature of hand work, and I do like the images to be a bit less than perfect.
 

Not Quite There Yet.

Using this background that I printed from a sheet of textured paper on the gelatin plate, along with the use of several small resists that I had cut out, I wanted to start on a new project featuring the shape of the body when dancing.

      While the resists worked well, the background became muddier the more layers that I added.

                         This one might  have potential, but it's already too dark and busy.

This is definitely the best of a bad lot! It may be possible to work further with this one and end up with something usable. On the other hand it too may end up with mud if I'm not very careful.
 

Interesting!

I had just taken the lid off a plastic container which had been in the freezer for a couple of weeks when I noticed the pattern of ice on the underside of the lid. The contents of the container must have been still warm I think and the film of steam froze. What beautiful fern-like patterns!

Here I have fiddled about in Photoshop to produce this fossil fern like image. The faint circles are just the pattern of the plastic lid.

Here is another part of the patterned lid. I wonder how easy it would be to purposefully create icy patterns on plastic in the freezer. Worth a try perhaps.
 

Backyard Colour.

I'm fortunate enough to be able to see the back garden from my kitchen window, and I really love to see the splashes of colour appearing now in early spring. This garden bed is a mass of different coloured daisies, with some concrete ducks keeping an eye on things.

This pale apricot coloured Clivia is so lovely.  I bought it at a Clivia show that I went to some years ago and it has multiplied nicely. However I wish that I had bought a few more of the amazingly coloured bulbs, but they were very expensive.

  

               This Clivia is a striking orange colour, but it also has yellow at the centre of each flower.

                                  A pretty blue Aquillegia that self sows all over the garden.

                                                           Another paler orange Clivia.