Last One..............I Think.

 These are the seed pods from another species of Brachychiton, or Kurrajong tree. Shorter and fatter than the others that I carved a few days ago, these pods are empty of seeds where as the thinner longer ones still had seeds in the pods.

 I think however that I'll pretend that the seeds were still in these pods, much easier to carve than empty shells.

 I think it would have been a better idea to carve them separately for multiple arrangements, however, this will do for now.

                                          A bit more texture needed inside the pods I think.

Not so Successful.

 I wanted to make the last of the stamps in this series of native seed pods and so I chose Eucalyptus macrocarpus, which has an enormous seed capsule. I thought that this preliminary drawing on the carving rubber looked O.K, so I set to work.

 After a little bit of carving I realised that the capsules facing the viewer were a bit ambiguous and really didn't convey any dimensional quality.

 I had even run out of pieces of Perspex on which to mount it, so added it to the other side of another stamp just to test it out.

Not up to much as a print I don't think, but time is getting short so I might have to make do with it.

Brachychiton Pods.

 These pods are from a Brachychiton tree, it's better known names are Kurrajong or Ilawarra Flame tree. The clusters of small bright scarlet flowers are followed by these very large pods full of seeds.

These 3 stamps should be enough to print to give me the characteristic bunch of pods, although I really need a small stem to hang them from. I think that there are only 3 species of Brachychiton, although I might be wrong.  One is the amazing Queensland Bottle tree and there also appears to be another one without a common name. It too is growing in a park nearby and I hope to be able to carve some stamps from it's pods too.  They are much shorter and fatter than these from the Kurrajong and the flowers are quite different, like little green bells with a purple spotted interior.

Still Stamp Carving.

 A relative has a beautiful Silver Princess Eucalypt in his garden and I've long admired the spectacular hanging bunches of bright red flowers, but now that it has finished flowering, the seed capsules are all hanging down in their place. Shorter and broader than the other eucalypt seed capsules that I've carved, I found it difficult to get the proportions of these quite right.

 The leaves are fairly typical eucalypt leaves, the long thinish variety that is, so I've made them fairly generic.

 The carving is looking O.K here, that is until I cut the lower bit of one of the leaves off by mistake!

Oh, well, leaves come in all sizes and shapes, this one is just shorter and thinner than I originally intended.

More Leaf Stamps.

 These banksia leaves are just so diverse in their form, from multi toothed older leaves to the young ones with just a couple of points. I chose 3 of these to add to the one that I had carved a stamp from previously. It was an old leaf with many points, so I chose a selection of young leaves that were all different.

I now have a collection of 5 different Banksia leaf stamps that I can combine in different ways to produce a 'sprig' of foliage to go with the cones that I carved some time ago.

Continuing the Mud Project.

 This is a print from the screen made with the Gocco machine, and it's turned out quite well I think.

 I have made 2 different screen versions, the  second one in reverse and elongated. Unfortunately the fine track lines have become clogged with paint very quickly, but I can easily ink them in by hand later I think.

 Rather than make another (very expensive) screen I sealed a couple of pieces of cardboard with sealant and draped bits of cotton yarn around to suggest walking paths on a map. I also sealed them with 2 coats of matte acrylic medium and then inked the plate. The yarn worked out reasonably well, but the paint managed to get all over the plate, (see test print below) so I'll have to be careful to rub off the excess when printing.

                 This will do quite well, as I only wanted a suggestion of a walking track map.

Back to the Mud.

The pages of mud painted paper have been sitting on my desk for a few days while various ideas percolated as to where I was going with this project. My original idea was just to use the various carved stamps of native Australian seed pods directly on the painted paper, but the words 'mud map' kept popping into my mind. (A mud map is just a rough map of walking tracks and so on ) I then started to go with this idea and scanned a couple of maps of an area that has the same red soil as I was using to paint the paper and then tried to print the maps onto the papers. Not a good idea, not only did the printer refuse to print for all but 2 tries, but it then occurred to me that the fine bits of soil dust would do no good to the workings of my printer! And anyway, a mud-map is nowhere near as detailed as the maps that I was printing. Next idea, make up a mud-map and then make a thermofax screen (Gocco) of the map. Here is the computer printed double page, the rough mud- map and the screen.

New stamp.

I spotted this leaf on a different species of Banksia to the one that I have previously worked with. This spiky one is ideal to make a stamp from as it is so specific to the particular plant and makes a much more interesting stamp than the usual everyday leaf shapes. It's shown here with the original leaf.