Drought

 With almost no rain since the beginning of the year and not much for the last few months of last year, the area around our little bush house is looking very dry and parched.

 All the brownish green patches in the foreground are patches of moss on the rocks, which may or may not ever return to it's lovely lush winter green colour.

                                   Piles of dead parched fallen trees on the side of the track.

There is a creek running from left to right in the foreground which is now completely dry. The water does run under ground for quite some distance if there is actually water down there, but sadly I don't think that there is any more.

Another Collagraph.

                                         
Today I  constructed a new plate over the top of an older one that didn't have enough texture to print properly. This one almost erred the other way with a lot of shiny transparent texture from the texture paste, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the above print was really interesting with a few elements of the previous plate showing through, making for quite a complex image. The off white colour of the printing paper also enhanced the image, as rather than showing stark white though the gaps in colour, a softer white added a nice light to the print I think.

Another Collagraph.

A new print from an old collagraph plate. I thought that this print was a little too light when it first came off the press, but I ended up much preferring it to the more heavily inked versions that I subsequently printed.

11 Numbats Nagging.

Here is the second in my Aussie Christmas series, with the eleven Nagging Numbats. I carved the numbat stamp from SoftCut rubber as usual, but added the pale colour of the body patches digitally. With an uneven number of nagging numbats, I've designed 3 animals having a group nag in the background!

12 days of Christmas!

Well, it's a long time until next Christmas, however another group that I belong to have decided to work a new piece each month, to the theme of the 12 Days of Christmas.
A couple of us wanted to use the Australian version of the carol, and I also decided to work backwards from 12 to 1. There are at least 5 different versions of the Australian carol, so I was free to pick and choose the animals that appealed to me most.
This  photo is of 12 Frilled Neck lizards running, on a background of the Bungle Bungle Ranges in the Northern Territory.
I hand carved a stamp of the lizard, scanned a copy into the computer and made it into various sizes to fit the A5 size paper.
I used my own photo taken from a light plane while flying over the Ranges.

Light & Dark.

Using an old collagraph plate I printed off these two versions. The first print, the one above, was a little too dark, but had some lovely effects when viewed close up. Click on the image to enlarge it. I think that with the addition of a 'roll up' in white, it will be much improved.

The 'ghost' print above is really interesting, and in some respects I prefer it to the dark one. Again, click on the image to view it enlarged. I think that the area on the far left has worked very well, with a good contrast between the lights and darks.

Ammonites etc.

I'm not at all sure how this collagraph plate will work out, but I'll give it a try tomorrow and hope that I can get at least one 'interesting' print from it. The background is a piece of cardboard that I sprayed with some very old webbing spray. I'm hoping that there will be enough texture in it to give some interest to the plate. The weeds are texture paste spread through a commercial stencil, and the ammonites and trilobites are my hand carved stamps coated in texture paste and stamped.I think that I'll have to be very careful in wiping the ink from this one, as it will be very easy to over wipe and leave no dark areas.

All Caught Up.

As I hadn't done the 'bug' (beetle) for February in time to take to the group meeting, I also now had the colour to be featured for the March insect. I didn't waste time, I just got on and did it!
This weevil is more of a coppery gold in real life, but the required turquoise is about a true colour. Again I have used my own carved stamps for the beetle and leaves, working over the print with machine stitching and adding paint for the solid colour of the weevil.