I can't believe that it is 6 months since I last posted on this site. It hasn't been that I haven't continued to make gelatin prints, just that I have been too busy printing to take time out from printing to post pictures. So here are some of the prints with circular inserts of other prints to all form pages in a new book called 'The Circle of Life' 

                                         These 3 below have yet to have the life forms added.

More Botanicals.

With Melbourne being in the grip of a heat wave, the time normally spent working in the vegetable garden, has been spent playing with printing plants (botanicals) on my Gelatine plate. Here are a few more new images.

It's always tricky to decide when enough is enough! Too many layers and the print is a muddy mess, and too few layers and the print can appear too simple. Although there are three layers in the print above, I feel that there are too many open spaces. However, with the addition of a stamp or two that may not be the case.

                  This I feel is not successful! The grasses are too pale against the background.

While this print is fairly simple, I really like the colour and texture on some of the leaves. The blue on the leaves is left from a previous print and the paint was still wet.

Although fairly cluttered, I quite like this one, with some leaves appearing quite distinct and some appearing more complex.

Time for Printing Again.

 It seems a very long time since I posted anything here......in fact is IS a long time! Here we are in mid January 2025 and this is my first post for the year. I haven't been idle however, just snowed under with domesticity and a partner's ill health. It was lovely to get back to printing on a gelatine plate, inspired by  an online course that I enrolled in presented by Kim Herringe, a wonderful teacher and artist from Queensland. Her lessons are extremely well organised, very well delivered and very inspirational. Below are a few prints that I made last week following her lessons.

                                                 It was a good start to an other artistic year.

Full O' Fish.

This was the title that I gave my fabric fish bowl which has been in a recent exhibition called 'Vessel'

As the exhibition was to feature items using any form of printmaking, the fish are all printed from my hand carved rubber fish stamps. I had such fun making this fish bowl, but I have to admit that fitting the bottom to the sides was a bit tricky.

     This bowl is from a pattern in the book 'fast, fun & easy fabric vases' by Linda Johansen.

Birds of the Garden.

 I have just started on a series of bird prints, featuring the birds that I see in and around my home. Not long ago we very rarely saw magpies in the city, but these days there are dozens around on the various street nature strips. 

 The Red Wattle birds seem to have always been here in this corner of the city. They are very large nectar feeding birds, and they seem to have no idea that they are too big for some of the flower stems that they land on, resulting in lots of broken vegetation where they have been.

The very pretty little Wrens do not occur in the city garden, but are quite common in the garden of our bush cottage.

  All the backgrounds of these prints are made on the gelatine plate and I carved the birds from soft rubber and stamped them on the backgrounds, colouring by hand where necessary.

Autumn Reflections.

On a recent trip to the Melbourne Botanic Gardens I was delighted to see the wonderful reflections of the colourful Autumn foliage in the lake, just like an impressionist painting.

Some of the reflected green vegetation was also stunning when the slightest breeze blew the reflection into ripples.

                                                    What a lovely morning of photography!

Another Litle Book.

 Having made many, many gelatine prints over the last few years it's been a wonderful discovery to know that I can incorporate some of them into hand made books. There is a limit to how many can be framed and hung on a wall or offered for sale at exhibitions, so this new outlet for creativity has been so rewarding. This latest book using my prints is a variation on a Winged Book as described by Alisa Golden in her publication 'Making Handmade Books'.

              It's a little book telling the life history of a butterfly with suitable quotes throughout.

                           All the folds shown open out with more images and quotes to be seen.

                                                I've had so much fun making this little book!

Another New Project.

 Although I haven't taken photos of the rest of the book shown in the previous post, it is in fact finished!However,

I have been busy since then on other projects, one of which is a collection of postcard sized prints for an exhibition. Here is one of them, butterfly prints using the leaves of a Ginkgo tree growning in my back garden. A lot of the leaves look very like the wings of butterflies to me, so I chose some of the smaller ones and used them to print images on my gelatin plate. The background is a texture plate of open weave fabric that I made several years ago.

Continuing Project.

Here are all 4 of the centre and side page spreads for the new book. Each long strip will be folded in half and the smaller side panels attached at each end. Unfortunately the light shining on the metallic paint has once again made the prints difficult to see, and I have also added a little bit more to a couple of the images since I took the photo.

A Couple More.

I am more or less thinking of energy being broadcast from these spheres, so I am cutting rubber stamps with patterns that I can use to depict 'energy',  repeated marks such as the ones above.

New Project for 2024.

Responding to notification for an exhibition of artists books later in the year, I have been exploring some ideas for a new book. My previous entries have been books featuring insects in general and beetles in particular. Below are some preliminary prints on a completely different, and for me, unusual topic.  The book is going to be an 'expanding accordion' book, which features a little bit of sewing of spines, and I think it will make an effective display of the prints, both sides of which will be seen. 

I'm using a lot of metallic paint on the gel plate, making it very hard to photograph, perhaps scanning is the way to go.

Butterflies Galore!

 I've loved butterflies my entire life and can never get enough of them into my art. Using a gelatine plate and hand cut collage here are 3 recent butterfly pictures.

"Exploding' Books

 I recently attended a wonderful workshop to learn how to make an exploding book. This is only one name for this technique, but it's a good one given how the book works. We were told that all the items for the book would be supplied with the exception of the prints to be used, so I just bundled up a pile of old prints in 2 different colourways, orange and green and hoped that I would have enough suitable prints to make the little book. I did and below is the result, first the front cover with the pages folded and then the book opened out.

After making the book in class I decided to use up parts of old eco printed paper to make another book, to see if I could make it without the excellent guidance of the tutor. I only made 2 small mistakes and what's more I used up a lot of those old prints.

Lots of Bottles.

 I seem to have a theme going at the moment on my Gel plate, bottles. I'm not sure what inspired this theme, but I'm having fun making various prints using the bottle masks that I made.

In this one above I added pieces of vegetation sort of inserted into the necks of the bottles, but I'm not sure if that works or not. More play needed I think!

This one above actually has 10 green bottles, quite by accident and not design, so of course it is called '10 Green Bottles'.

Angry Bird!

This fine fellow, or Lady-Bird, was most unhappy that I appeared in the doorway to take his/her photo. Screeching loudly he/she told me in no uncertain terms to go away!!