A Little More printing.

 Using the home made gelatine printing plate and some circular texture plates that I made recently, I've been playing around with the idea of moons/planets and so on. Although the 'smears' were accidental, I ended up really liking the effect so decided to go further with the print and add carved stamps of birds and some bits of pressed fern rolled with acrylic ink

 This is another possible print where I tried to replicate the marks in the previous print, but it ended up quite different. I'm not sure where I'll go, if anywhere, with this one. The one below is very stark at the moment, but it may be quite an interesting print to add further to.

Flowers in Winter.

 I always carry my camera when out walking the dog, a proper point and shoot camera that is, although I do have my phone handy too. This ornate iron work on top of a gate caught my eye, partially because of the scrolls and spirals, but also because of the spiders' webs sparkling with drops of rain, which are all twisted around the iron work.

 Although it will be winter here in 4 days, I'm surprised at just how many plants are flowering in my garden. A geranium above.

                           This is some sort of species gladioli, but I have no idea of it's name.

                                                            A small flowering camellia.                                                      

                                                                A very pretty Fuchsia.

                                                    One of our native Fuchsias, a Correa.

.                       We call this Ribbon Bush, but again I don't know it's correct name.

Melbourne Skyline.

 It was the clouds that first caught my eye, but then I realised what a good view of the city of Melbourne I had from our local park.

                                                  What a jumble of  buildings of all sizes.

The Canine Saga.

 Above is our dog Polly, an Australian Kelpie Labrador cross who unfortunately succumbed to cancer towards the end of March. She was nearly 12 years old and up until her final collapse was displaying no symptoms at all of the tumour on her spleen. We said a very sad farewell to Polly thinking that we couldn't bear to have another dog and say goodby again, having done it 5 times already over the past 50 years.

However we have now rescued Sophie, a Kelpie Border Collie cross who suffered horrific injuries at some stage recently and who was given up for adoption. She is very sweet and came with a set of skills already learned, unlike Polly who wasn't even house trained when we adopted her at the age of 2.

 As part of her scialising into the family we tried introducing her to Molly, a Groodle. Molly was very keen to get to know Sophie, but Sophie didn't want to meet Molly at all.

 Seeing Molly play in the mud and water on a wet afternoon in the park I don't blame Sophie!  What a little ragamuffin Molly is.

Variations.

 I have been fiddling about with this figure image for a few weeks now and I'm still not satisfied with the results. I reduced my original drawn image by 80% and cut another rubber stamp, simplifying the pattern on the figure.

So now I have the original collagraph  plate at the lower right, the first small rubber stamp above it and the new larger stamp on the left. I also altered the angle of one of the arms slightly so that the figure more easily embraces the large printed sphere on the background print, one version of which I posted previously.

This 'n That.

 I can never really get the true colours of a sunset on film, but with the 'sunset' setting on my camera the colours certainly were more or less accurate this time.

 The branches of this tree were recently taken off and I feared that the rest of the tree would be removed too, However, it has been left and lo and behold, it's sprouting new foliage up and down the trunk. It almost looks as if the foliage is in a spiral pattern up the trunk. It just shows the amazing regenerative abilities of our Eucalyptus tress.

 Meanwhile I managed to grab a little bit of time for a short printing session with the gelatin plate, a cardboard plate and a cardboard figure that I had constructed to use as a collagraph plate. It didn't work all that well, but I'm happy with the general idea and layout.

Here's another version, this time with the larger sphere less 'underwater' looking and without the figure. I'll concentrate on carving a rubber figure the same size as the cardboard one before going any further.

The Marine Theme.

 Here is the final of my 'patchwork' of marine gelatin prints.It seems to be fairly harmonious and best of all it uses up lots of pieces of prints where bits of them were OK, but overall there were problems.

 I'm still trying to get this idea to work, but apart from managing to get good registered margins, and an interesting background I still can't get the deep blue that I want without compromising some of the other details.

City Views.

 On an early morning walk to the park I was surprised to see just how clear the air was over the city.

                                                   What an incredible jumble of buildings!

A Collage for a Change.

 With so many recent prints not quite making the grade, I decided to cut out the best bits of each one and assemble the cuttings into a collage. Above is the first layout, not good!

                                                           Second layout getting better.

                                                         Now that's looking much better!

A Walk in the Creek Reserve.

With the recent good rains and the still warm autumn weather, it's the ideal conditions for the growth of various fungi. I photographed these three this morning in the local creek reserve. I just love the contrast between the bright orange colour of the fungi and the almost black colour of the wet tree stump.

 These white fungi look almost sinister, but again the contrast between the almost totally white colour of the fungi and the damp leaf litter is very stark.

I just love this photo, the orange fungi has been eaten into by some animal or insect, but it stands proudly on top of the decaying tree stump, growing in a small fissure. The texture of the worn old stump is wonderful!

Variations on a Theme.

 I'm still fiddling around trying to get the effect that I want with this marine theme. I quite like the streaks of yellow light coming down through the water, but it isn't repeatable unfortunately and I need 3 of them more or less the same. It's all bit too green overall too.

                                                                      Even greener!

                                                                     Much too green!

Printing Afternoon.

 I spent a few hours this afternoon trying out the various marine image stamps that I have carved recently together with a couple that I made some time ago, such as the Leafy Sea Dragon. The blue in this print is much too bright with a slight purple tone which is not what I want.

 The Leafy Sea Dragon is a stamp that I'm very happy with, but it's way our of scale for the rest of this piece and the blue is too turquoise and wishy washy for what I have in mind.

 This darker blue is better and the background piece of embossed wall paper prints quite well, and it's better without the Sea Dragon too I think. Still not happy with it all though!

                                                           Getting there, but not right yet.