Happy Faces!

I spotted these happy faced wooden-spoon people on a nature strip near home while I was out walking the dog. Some small person must have had so much fun making these, and as a result anyone walking past would surely have a smile on their face. I know that I did!

More Printing.

 This above is obviously a green version of the After the Fire red print. The owls are my hand carved stamps with the screen print on a gelatine plate background. I'm not sure that it really works, but I'll store it away for the time being.

This one I'm very happy with. I called it The Juggler, referencing those people who are trying to juggle life at the moment when we are in Stage 4 lock down because of the Covid 19 pandemic. Trying to keep all the balls in the air with home schooling children, running a household, working full time, caring for pets, keeping fit and all the other things that need to be done every day.This work is quite complex, with my own cut stencils, carved stamps, gelatine plate prints and a commercial rubber stamp. I outlined a lot of the image with a gold pen, which I think really works.

Another Winter's Day.

It was a very cold and wet day here today, so an ideal day for more printing. This is the print that I showed yesterday with the addition of the birds and some more ink to the lower edge of the image. The birds are my hand carved stamps, so it was good to be able to use them again. I've called this After the Fire, although judging by the colours, the fire is still raging!

This above is another multi layered geletine plate print. It includes various gears and cogs,for some of them I used commercial wooden ones to press into the ink before printing, and some are mini screen prints. Perhaps this should be called "Time Passing' as we are now halfway through our lock down for Stage 4 of the pandemic.

The Fire.

After I had printed the background texture red and yellow I found that I was thinking about last summer and the horrendous bush fires that ravaged areas of the country. With that in mind I used my trusty old Gocco printer to make a screen of leafless trees and shrubs. The screen was made from a print that I designed on the computer using Photoshop. Once the screen was covered in ink it seemed a shame not to use it a second time, but the only background that I had already printed was the green one below.

                               While not a bush fire scene, it works quite well I think.
                            I might add some small bird stamps to both the prints next.

Sea Birds.

Today's print is called 'Sea Birds'. With about 6 separate layers of ink it's amazing that I managed to keep the edges pretty well lined up. It isn't easy on a gelatine plate, but with a cardboard 'forme' that I constructed it is possible. There is one small over print of about 0.5mm that doesn't show in this photo, but after all it is hand made art not machine made!

It Must be Nearly Spring!

        Here are some photos of native Wattle species in flower around my neighborhood today.

 It is said that no matter what month in the year it is, there will always be a species of Wattle in flower

 However, seeing these gorgeous blooms definitely makes me think that Spring is not too far off.

September 1st is officially Spring here, so I guess there are a few weeks to go, but this cheerful yellow is much appreciated after the grey and cold days of Winter. 

Accidental Art.

 Having made several cardboard texture plates to print with, I was amazed to see how they picked up the colour from each print that I did. Rather than mixing the colours up, they mostly stayed quite distinct, with the result that at the end of the printing session I had some very interesting texture plates.

     It was a shame to wash them clean, but of course I did photograph them first as you can see.

The Next Stage.

I knew that the original print needed something to focus the attention on, so I created these two small screens, (yes, these bees are 2 different sizes) and I'm very happy with the result.
I am however not very happy with the new format of Blogger, so I have once again reverted to the original format, which is apparently available until the end of the month.
I can't find out how to resize the photos in the new format, but if anyone can tell me how to, I'll be very grateful come September 1st.

Experimentation.

Today was bitterly cold outside with intermittent squalls of rain, so it was an ideal day to spend experimenting with various texture plates that I had recently made. Once again I wanted to use some of my old prints rather than using new paper, layering the texture over the existing prints. This one above was originally in a horizontal format with a sort of ground layer below 2 spheres. I added the gears and an overall texture plate, but the result is less than appealing!

This one above was one of  couple that I started out with a fresh sheet of paper. I used one of the new texture plates with the addition of a 'humanoid' stamp that I carved a year or so ago and a recently made sphere. I made this by spreading moulding paste through a commercial stencil. This needs some more elements obviously.

The one above is probably the most interesting of the day's prints. It features  a background texture plate, stencils and pressed fern leaves.

                                                     Above is the same texture plate and ferns.

Below is a very pale print from my last session over printed with some of the feathers in my collection. I don't think that the gears go with the feathers as such, but it's worth trying to add some more elements to the print to try to tie it all together I think.