A Walk in the Park.

With only a month to go before the official start of spring, this afternoon was lovely, with blue skies and  the sun even had a little warmth. These Rainbow Lorikeets obviously felt that spring was in the air as they looked for a suitable nesting hollow in the old Gum tree.

Final Printing.

 First the buds.  These started out as dandelion buds, but now that they are all white I guess they could be a similar shaped bud of any flower.

 

Then the flowers.

Finally the leaves and the butterfly. The butterfly is stamped with iridescent acrylic paint, as I wanted it to fade into the background a bit, but also to show up against the black. I could have added another smaller leaf, but at this stage I was nervous that I would make a mess and as I only ended up with 4 final prints I really couldn't afford to make a mistake and have to start all over again. Done!

Another Version.

With the deadline looming I must make a decision as to which version of the print I want to submit. This one above is only done with acrylic ink so is a bit greyed out, but done in block printing ink it should be better. I have to choose between the all white on black as above, the white leaves but with coloured flowers and butterfly or the back on white with no colour or with orange flowers and blue butterfly. Decisions, decisions.....................

More Fungus.

  This very interesting fungus is quite big and at first glance could easily be some exotic flower.

The one on the right resembles a nose I think, and one of my photos even had a rain drop hanging off the end adding to the nasal look!

Another Printing Session.

 In this print I have used the new leaf and butterfly stamps. The smaller butterfly is definitely better, but I still don't like the leaf on the right, it's one of the old ones and the veins are too big!

Yet another new leaf stamp, cut from the shape of the old large one but this time with smaller veins. Of course the shape is reversed as I just traced the old rubber shape. All in black?.......maybe.

New Stamps.

 Rather than keeping on printing with leaf stamps that I was not happy with, I decided to carve a couple of new ones. However, it's the middle of winter here and no dandelion plants to be found, or so I thought. In the end I had to settle for these tiny miserable specimens from which to draw and later to carve the stamps.

 

 Here are 2 new little leaves, one on each side of the Perspex mount. I also took the time to cut a smaller butterfly for the current work, as the one that I used previously was too big. Here I've stamped many times over, each time trying to cut just the tiniest piece from the antennae, not an easy job on such a small piece of 'rubber'. I got there in the end and I'm happy with the new leaves and the new butterfly.

Less is Better.

 I've reduced the number of leaves in this print and I think that it's a definite improvement, although I'm still not happy with their placement.

 Although this butterfly stamp is too big for this card, I think that another smaller one might work well. I've used this butterfly many times since carving it, but a smaller one with similar veins might be a challenge. The image below is exactly the same with an inversion in Photoshop. Maybe I should make the design in white on a black background like this, as it's quite interesting.

Another Idea.

 Looking at the previous trials of the dandelion postcard I decided that all the shades of green leaves were too wishy-washy and didn't make much of an impact. Here I've decided to trial black leaves with yellow and orange accents.

I think that the orange makes more of a statement than the yellow and I quite like the placement of the flowers and buds here, however the leaves are too dense and I'm not sure that the greyer ones in the background work. Each trial run is getting closer to something that looks good, so back to the drawing, or stamping, board again.