Cards.

I've been having lots of fun over the past few years trying out various forms of print making, from lino cuts to collagraphs, from gelatine plate prints to stamp carving and from collage to digital prints. All of this has resulted in a pile of prints, not all of which are worth framing or exhibiting. Some of the prints which appear to be failures, do however have parts of them that pass muster, and so I have been creating cards from these, not from the originals, but from photos of the originals, as I may yet add to the originals.

Below are a group of photos of prints that I made into cards recently. If you look closely you can see stitching on the middle one.

               Each print uses multiple techniques, so the 'cover all' description is 'mixed media'!

The blue print below was made using pieces of a common weed called Shepherds' Purse. The little heart shaped seed capsules are ideal for making an image on a gelatine plate.

Emerging Ferns.

While on a photographic assignment in the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, I spotted these lovely emerging fern fronds deep in the Fernery. It was pouring with rain, but under the tree canopy the ferns were still dry and showing their vibrant spring greens.
 

Tree Magic.

 While walking in the bush recently I came across this Eucalyptus tree with a rock embedded in the trunk. The question is, did someone originally put the rock there between the 2 trunks, or did the tree grow up around the rock?

              It's very firmly embedded now and I suppose that I'll never know how it got there.

Variations.

 After many trials and of course errors, I have at last come up with the final shape of my Harlequin figure. Then I needed to print some backgrounds for him to be displayed against and finally to print some more figures with possible variations in the colour of the clothing.

I managed to source some tiny black paper fasteners which work really well with this size figure and he can now be posed in many different positions of The Dance. Below are the many attempts to get a nice even print of the various body parts on different metallic backgrounds, none of which show up well in the photo!

Finally choosing the best of all the bits, I cut out the 3 figures that I needed, each one with a different colour. I then had to decide if the contrast with the background of each worked as I wanted.

   The figures haven't been pinned yet, the parts are just vaguely placed in the correct positions. Getting closer to the final stages now!

Continuing the Dance.

I've been spending quite a bit of time recently on making my dancing figures. I need to have them mounted on a coloured background, so while I have settled on a basic figure, I'm not sure about what is the best contrast between the figure and the background.

The figure below  is another version of the diamond pattern carved onto the rubber block. This pattern is much too regular, but I like the finer lines. The figure is too short and fat for this particular project, so I will carve another more slender figure very soon.

  

In the figure below I have carved out some of the individual diamonds and quickly coloured them in with inks to see if I like the concept...... I do.

 

 

These slender figures are more what I had in mind, and here I'm thinking of contrasting colours for the figure and the background. The background papers are all gelatine printed patterns, some from long ago like the pale blue paper and some from just this afternoon like the grey one above.

I don't like the grey at all, much too dull and cold, but it does provide a contrast with the orange figure.I think that the blue figure is much better, and although I like the yellow figure on the blue background, I don't think that the contrast is high enough.

Some Art at Last!

I am in the process of working on something quite different for me. First I want to create a figure that I can  make dance, a jointed body is just the beginning.

Here I have printed out all the pieces that I hand carved to enable me to print a dancing figure in various different poses.

Top right is the roughly drawn and ready to cut shapes, while the lower left shows the pieces trimmed and ready to print with. The diamond pattern on the lower right figure is based on a traditional harlequin costume, but for the purposes of this particular project, it is cut by hand resulting in a pretty rough pattern.
 

Ice on the Frozen Spinach!

                            I couldn't resist taking photos of ice crystals on my frozen spinach.

The spinach is home grown and having a surplus, I blanched and froze a couple of containers full.

 

What a Clever Bird!

 

Spotted in the corner of the garage on a shelf is this lovely little bird's nest.

 

On closer inspection there are just 2 black and white speckled eggs lying on the soft dry grass in the                                                                         bottom of the nest.

 

Rust.

 On a recent trip to the country I took a walk around an abandoned property and found all sorts of items rusting away in the grass and around the old house. Inspiration for future art perhaps.

 

More Plant Experiments.

I noticed buttercups flowering outside the back fence of a neighbour's property, so I used some of those leaves, plus a print from a buttercup flower. It was too difficult to get a good print from the fragile petals of the actual flower, so I used my hand carved stamps for the other flowers. Stamps were also used for the various insects. I noticed yesterday that the neighbour had unfortunately poisoned the buttercups, so no more prints from them!

                          Various leaves used from my garden and another butterfly stamp.

 

New Project.

I'm not quite sure why, but I suddenly changed tack recently to printing with fresh foliage instead of dried plant material. I also decided that I needed to show the roots of the plants rather than having them sprouting randomly from the bottom of the page. This necessitated pulling up plants and washing off the roots, so I started out with vegetable seedlings from my garden, beetroot, spinach and lettuce.

I love the colour that these beetroot seedlings turned out to have, with the blending of red and green paints directly on to the gelatine plate.

                                  A couple of layers here, with the beetroot and some grass.

Grass, spinach, beetroot, carrot and another grass plant which didn't show up very well. I just love how some of the roots show up and I'm enjoying this new direction. I can see how addictive it might become!

Variations on a Theme.

For some reason I decided not to go ahead with using any more stencils, but to try out another couple of ideas that I had. Being confined to the house with Covid gives plenty of time for artwork, which is excellent as far as I'm concerned!

Variations on a theme, but this one above is my favorite, I like the colours and the way the various grasses printed. The butterfly is one of my hand carved stamps.

                                  I'm not sure about the large bird at the left on this one.

The pale grey isn't as prominent on the actual print as it shows here and it looks better as a result.

Yet another version of moon, vegetation and wildlife, all printed on my home made gelatine plate.

Positive & Negative.

 After I had cut out the latest stencil, shown in my previous post and on the left in the photo below, I suddenly thought to take out all the pieces of cardboard that I had thrown in the bin and glue them onto a plate which I can press it into a gelatine plate for an image, the reverse of the stencil. I'm not sure if the pieces have enough height to work well, but nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Road Works.

 I spotted this network of cracks in the surface of a local road while out walking the dog. I thought that the pattern was fascinating and I wondered what had made it crack in just that way.

              I traced off the design from the photo and ended up with this pattern of lines above.

 In Photoshop I then added a more lines to change it into a rectangular shape and enlarged it to an A4 format, (30cm x 21cm) Now to cut it out as a stencil!

Above is the cut out stencil, which is going to be hard to work with as it's so fragile. After a few uses the left over paint on the cardboard will add some stability to the thin lines, but for now it will be handled with care!

More Stencilled Prints.

 Having recently put aside a pile of gelatine plate prints that needed more layers, I finally got them all out yesterday and started to add the new stencil work to them. They do still need final focal points, but I really like these ones shown below.