Leaves & Moths.

Here is the finished Leaves and Moths sun print with added stamped images. I didn't like the single large moth so I have added 2 of the smaller versions, and also used a gold ink pen to colour the patterns on the wings. Anyone who has been following me for a while would perhaps recognise the moth stamps as the ones that I used in my large Moth Mandala work a few months ago. That's the good thing about individual stamps as opposed to a large collagraph or lino cut, they can be used over and over again in different contexts.

Adding to the Sunprints.

 I've rolled some orange paint along the backs of the 3 vine tendrils and pressed them onto the negative spaces on the leaves of the sun print. That blank space in the upper middle called for something extra, but I'm not sure if I like the angle of the carved Softcut moth stamp. It might have been better to turn it a little more to the right, but it's too late now as I was working on an original sun print.

Using the Photoshop Invert command, the colour inversion is quite interesting, with the orange marks of the ink on the pressed leaves becoming speckled with green like the green of the originally orange moth.

Sun Prints Part 2.

 With every day adding to the age of my hoarded sun printing inks, I grabbed the first available sunny day without wind to print off some more images, this time with pressed foliage rather than negatives. Melbourne is generally known for it's windy Spring, but this Autumn has been very windy too.

 Although I put a sheet of window glass over the items to be printed, I still don't want leaves or dust to be blown over the image. If you can look closely you can see where some of the leaves have tiny insect  holes nibbled in them and the light has made speckles on the blocked out areas.

 Here I tried some commercial skeletonised leaves with mixed success. They need to be very closely in contact with the paper to make a good print and the rest of them on this sheet of paper were indistinct due to them not being completely flattened by the glass. I really like this corner however.

 I have been pressing tendrils of various vines that I pick on my morning walk with the view to using them pressed, but they seem to make better contact with the paper when they are still soft and not quite dried out.

In the sun, the glass developed condensation on the underside and reacted with the ink in the corners of the paper, but it's quite interesting the way it's only in the corners.

Printing Session.

 I decided to mount the inner parts of the Bottlebrush flower onto a piece of acrylic to make the placement easier. I also made a 'forme' on the plate for the little printing press so that it would all line up accurately.

 I wasn't sure whether to print the red/pink colour first, or whether the back would be strong enough to print the colour on top of it. I was trying out various types of paper too, the cream ones here are a thick cotton printing paper and the white ones are multi media paper. I hadn't realised that the cream pieces were a little shorter than the white ones, so I got the placement of the first couple of prints wrong unfortunately.

 The main lino cut is also mounted on acrylic and fitted into the same 'forme' as the coloured sections.

 Here is the first of the series of combined prints, some of which are O.K and some of which aren't so good. I had trouble with the paper sliding slightly as it went through the press which gave me some blurry lines.

 In the end, I decided that the stamp ink over the lino print gave the best result, as it was less dense than the 'proper' printing ink and I preferred that look.

Here's the lino without the colour, which shows the difference between a stamp pad inked image that I made yesterday and one today using the correct printing ink.

Adding Colour.

 I've set myself a bit of a challenge, to add colour to the Bottlebrush flower before I print the leaves. It's easy to add the colour after the main branch, but to add it before requires  very good registration, which I haven't mastered as yet. Here above are the 3 splashes of colour in the correct orientation, carved in "SoftCut' and mounted on cardboard.

I stamped the red colour first and then tried to line up the lino exactly over the red. Not so easy I discovered. Here it's too far to the right, but how to line it up correctly I'm not quite sure. I'm still proofing with stamp ink, hence the patchy image. Until I get it all sorted, there is no point in setting up with printing ink and a press.

Back to the Lino.

 With another exhibition coming up soon, I wanted more Botanical prints from which to choose pieces for the exhibition . Here is the start of a Bottlebrush lino cut.

 It isn't going to be easy to get the spikiness of the flowers, but I think that this method will work.

            It's looking O.K so far, but removing all the surrounding lino will be a challenge.

                 I think that the edges are too straight and even, but a test print will check that.

 
  Not too bad at all really. Just a bit of a rough edge work needed and I'll be set to try a 'proper' print.

Ripples in the Sun.

 This above is an A4 sized negative that I printed from a series of small stencils combined in Photoshop to make the larger size that I wanted. I printed 2 so that I could sticky tape them together to make the blacks more dense to block out more of the sun.

 Using the very old opened bottle of purple sun dye I ended up with pink and a dark mauve rather than white and dark purple. It suggested sunset on the water to me so I added the little swimmer that I had already printed to the picture.

Not quite what I set out to achieve, but quite interesting I think. It probably could do with a trim too.

Playing with Sunprints and Stamps.

 I made copies of a couple of my sunprint pattern pages and played around with my new beetle stamps on top of them. The addition of the colour to the large beetle makes all the difference and I can now line up the 2 stamps pretty accurately to get a combined print. I rather like this on the patterned sunprint, even though the beetle outline blends in a bit. It's almost like some sort of fancy wallpaper! I'll try it out again with a couple more of the large beetles before I commit to using the original printed paper. The Rhinoceros beetle just disappears on this darker background print.

I just placed these Rhinoceros randomly to see if they would work on this blue background. Bearing in mind that the beetles are stamped with just ink from a stamp pad rather than much darker printing ink, I think that it will work quite well.