Looking Down.

As a scrounger from way back, I always look on the ground as I'm walking, as well all all around me of course. Since concentrating on printing over the past few years, I often use odd bits and pieces to print with. The photo shows a collection of items that I have collected on my walks over the past year or so. 

                  It's quite amazing what finds its way onto the footpath just waiting for me to find!

Tiny Tree.

As the house is still a mess because of the painting, and waiting for the soon to be laid new carpet in the living area, we set up a little Christmas display in one of the open cupboards that are waiting to be moved back to their correct places in the New Year. Just a small potted tree and some of the more interesting ornaments from years past.One little old Father Christmas must date from the 1950s, thus over 60 years old, but it wouldn't be Christmas without his appearance!

                                    Happy Christmas Everyone, and all good thoughts for 2022!

My Lilies.

 With all the the painting and furniture moving, posting on this site has been sporadic to say the least! However as the sun was getting low in the sky one late afternoon I was attracted by the light on these lilies in my garden and I just had to post the image.

Painting, The House!

After many years of putting up with  peeling paint and dingy rooms we took the plunge and booked a house painter to repair and repaint most of the inside of our home. This meant that we had to clear 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, hallway, TV/sitting/dining room and worst of all my workroom. What a huge effort, but now after a month of work and with one day of painting left to go, it's all going to be worthwhile.

                                            Storing some of the 'stuff' from my workroom!

                   Stacking the video,TV and audio equipment, plus dining room furniture.

            This picture and the one below show stripping the wallpaper from one of the bedrooms.

                                         My temporary workroom in the freshly painted bedroom.

I rather like this room for a workroom actually, the light is good and I have plenty of room for those supplies that I put aside for use while the painting is underway. It's a pity I can't stay in this room!

More Metal.

Here are 2 very different metal birds, and they are in fact in 2 different countries, Australia and New Zealand.

How clever the makers are with conveying the wing feathers and the nest in such a hard material, metal!

Metal Monsters!

Everywhere I go I seem to spot metal animals and insects. I spied this goat in a local front garden the other day, and since then I've seen many more, especially in my photo collection. I was surprised at just how many metal creatures I have photographed over the years.

                         Here are a few for today and I'll post a few more over the coming days.

Especially for Her!

 We are having a bit of painting done in the house at the moment and John the painter leaves his drop cloths down and ladders up from one day to the next as he moves from room to room. Guess who thinks that the drop cloths are being left especially for her to make a comfortable nest in when John  goes home!

Colour in Unlikely Places.

 On my first walk away from the local neighbourhood after the easing of lock-down restrictions, I explored below the new stretch of Skyrail in a distant suburb. Here the graffiti and tagging is everywhere and the backs of all the houses and yards are 'decorated' with a rainbow of colours.

However my eye was drawn to the flowers, nasturtium, rose and a salvia all blooming profusely amongst the graffiti  and corrugated iron fences. What caught my eye in particular was the natural spread of complimentary colours, orange/yellow and purple.

          Couldn't have been planted to better effect if a gardener had done it on purpose. Lovely !

Rainbow Lorikeets.

Ten years ago we would never see these beautiful parrots in suburbia, but for whatever the reason, the Rainbow Lorikeets have moved in and are common in this area.  The birds nest in hollows in trees and here you can see them working on enlarging a hollow in a mature European Plane tree. Tree limbs are regularly cut off when the branches threaten to hit overhead power lines, and where the branch has been removed there is a soft patch of wood that develops into a shallow hollow which the birds enlarge.

The trees develop quite odd shapes as a result of the pruning, sort of 'T' shaped, but it's perfect for these very pretty birds.

The males and females have similar colouring, and you can see where they get their name, Rainbow indeed.
 

Playing Around with Prints

I have always thought that adding to prints with a pen or extra paint was not for me, as I thought that the print should be in its final state when hot off the press or gelatin plate. However I have made so many uninspiring gelatin prints lately that were just border line to be in the bin or not, that I broke with my tradition and went back into the prints with pens and paint.

These moths were printed with my hand carved stamps and acrylic paint, but the paint was just too thick and none of the markings showed up. I'm still not convinced by this as a whole, but parts might be O.K for use on cards. The one below is now much more interesting with the addition of bronze and copper embellishments.

The last one was made with pressed flower tassels from a Garyia eleptica plant, or Silk Tassel Bush. The tassels are rather brittle  when pressed dry, but lasted long enough for me to make several different prints. Here I went back into the print and coloured parts of the moth wings and the flowers with  a soft metallic mauve paint. The gold markings on the moths don't show up in this photo very well, but the overall effect is quite nice I think.

Out Walking

 As we are still in lock down here because of the Covid Virus, our twice daily walks are very important, for us and the dog! For some reason our rescue dog Sophie reacts violently to some other dogs but is quite happy to play and interact with others. There doesn't seem to be any consistent reason that we can find why some other dogs are O.K and others definitely not. It's not size, not gender, colour or any of the obvious variables. It's just a case of liking some dogs and not liking others, rather like people really! One house that we walk past has some sort of a dog behind a fence and gate that I've never seen, but always heard, loudly. This time when walking past with a friend and not with Sophie, I was watched by a pair of eyes.

We have had a much better fall of spring rain this year and as a result the flowers in our garden and in the neighborhood gardens are just beautiful. I love the Gazania flowers with their loud colours and enormous size in our garden and couldn't resist trying an arty shot!

Spring has Sprung.

Although we are still having very wintry weather, the flowers and deciduous trees are all bursting out in spring flower and leaf. This tree below is a wonderful oak tree that spreads for meters on either side of the huge old trunk. The branches run parallel to the ground for a long way and the local children delight in bouncing up and down on them imagining that they are riding a horse no doubt. Our children did it and now our grandchildren are doing it too.

Black & White

 We are all so used to seeing everything in colour these days, especially our photos. A photographic group that I belong to decided that this month's topic would be flowers in black and white.

     Above is a very dainty Abutalon, or Chinese Lantern flower which is a pale orange colour.

                                                 This is an orange and green succulent flower.

I really liked the black stripes on this Broad Bean flower, something that I would probably not have noticed if I hadn't decided to take a picture of it for the monthly theme.

          A Hellebore flower, which is a greenish maroon when not converted to black and white.

Pretty Flowers!

 Taking the dog for a walk in the park this afternoon I found these very beautifully drawn and coloured flowers on the footpath beside the carpark. They are all uniform in size so I assume that the artist used a stencil and coloured them in with waterproof chalk or crayons.

                   Something to bring a smile to the face in these gloomy days of lockdown.

The Next Step.

 Now that I have carved six or so new moth stamps it's time to start using them on some of the gelatin printed pages of my insect and bird book. I have lots of previously carved beetle stamps, but I think that they're all too large for this small book. I also have some dragonfly stamps that I carved for a previous project but most of them are too large as well unfortunately. I can see that I have a lot more stamp carving ahead of me! It's a very good thing to be occupied with, in this our 6th lock down designed to slow the spread of the Corona virus.

Each signature will have a full double page spread in the middle, above is the first one almost completed.

I think that some of the leaf prints would benefit from being outlined against the busy backgrounds.

New Stamps.

 After a break of some weeks I have eventually got back to carving the stamps to add to the little book that I started making some time ago. Having printed all the backgrounds on my gelatin plate and added the vegetation using the same medium, it's now time to move to stamping bird and insect images onto those same pages.

Although these stamps are almost finished, I can still see some minor details that need fixing, and I want to carve a lot more too. It's a good start!

More Beetles.

 I've always loved photographing insects, especially beetles and butterflies. The 3 beetles below are all specimens that I've found on my bush walks, however the blue spotted weevil is the only one still alive.

                                              Here some ants are making off with their prize.

You would think that a beetle would try to camouflage itself, but this one clearly wanted to show off!

Close up and Personal.

 A couple of years ago I bought an inexpensive set of 3 clip on lenses for my phone, but apart from a little bit of playing around at the time I haven't really used them. However this morning I listened to a Zoom presentation on macro-photography and marveled at the prices people could pay for their lenses and extension tubes these days. I sold all of mine quite some time ago, as I didn't think that I would be using my old SLR cameras and their multitude of lenses again. I have bought several Point and Shoot digital cameras since then and have found that they do all that I want to do at this stage in my life. But just for fun I had another play with the phone close up lens and was quite amazed at what it could do. Below is picture close up and personal of a beetle's face, which I think is really interesting, even though not all of it is spot on in focus.

Fabric?

This gelatin print above was made using hand cut masks and stencils based on potato masher designs and a rubber 'thing' that I found while out walking. I carved a couple of rubber stamps too to add to the effect. Someone took one look at it and immediately said 'kimono fabric'. I hadn't thought of that, but she's right, it does look like a design for fabric.

This one I called Cosmic Lights, and again I worked it on a handmade gelatin plate.  I made a texture board using a piece of cardboard and the splashes of orange were added later with acrylic paint.
 

Blue, Purple & Orange

Above is a latest print on the gelatin plate, using my hand carved stamps, masks and stencils. I found an odd rubber 'thing' when out walking that was the basis for most of these shapes. It might have been a rubber base for a walking stick to prevent it slipping, but it has provided a lot of inspiration for printing.The shape at the top right is based on the end of a plastic potato masher!

Above is a texture plate that I've just used to print a background. I thought that the paint on the textures looked very interesting, an artwork in its own right perhaps.

Sunrise from a bedroom window. We are in our 6th lock-down here; luckily it is winter so that the temptation to stay outside for too long isn't very appealing.