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.