October Beetle.

As I am going to be away for a few weeks over the next couple of months, I wanted to get on and finish the monthly beetle series while I have the time.  This then is the beetle for October, and as always, I first carved the rubber stamp, printed it onto the fabric that I had previously dyed, and then stitched around the stamped lines. I then painted over the stamped image.  The leaves are also my hand carved stamps, and I machine stitched around them too, but didn't paint them as I wanted the beetle to be the focal point. One more to go, the beetle for November which is to be on a chocolate brown background. It's always a challenge to have the beetle properly visible on a dark background, as I have found when the colour chosen by the group was black or indigo.

Kaleidoscope Plate 1.

 In this photo I have traced the kaleidoscope image onto the cardboard circle, cut our the darkest shapes and painted various textures onto the other shapes.

Now the plate has been painted with shellac and will be ready for a test print when it has dried sufficiently.

Kaleidoscopes.

 After the moderate success of some of the collagraph plates that I made recently based on the art work of Ernst Haeckel, I played around with some of the original designs using a kaleidoscope function on the computer. Although they look fairly complex, I think that if I use the right textural media I could make some interesting plates from some of these.

 The top right in this photo is of the original Haeckel design and the 3 others are kaleidoscope variations.

   I rather like the top left one of these 3, but I wonder if I could turn it into a printing plate!

More Haeckel Plates.

 None of these versions of another Haeckel inspired collagraph plate really worked out well. I think the fault is in the plate itself or perhaps the ink.Maybe the plate just doesn't have enough variation in the textures.

 This one has the light and dark greens reversed compared to the one above it. I was  using a different ink to the one I used in the previous printing session, which may have something to do with the blotchiness of this trial.

This too is very blotchy, and as the ink was a lot more liquid than the brand that I used in the earlier prints, despite trying to thicken it up with a little talcum powder, it may explain the less than ideal coverage of the plate.

Spring in the Garden.

 Although it's very cold and windy there are signs of Spring in the garden......thank goodness. It's been a very wet and cold Winter and I for one would like some warmer weather.

 Probably the earliest flowers to come out, apart from some daisies, are the various varieties of Prunus. This bud is on a nectarine tree.

                                  A Calendula flower almost fully open in a rare spot of sunshine.

New Collagraph Plate Printing.

 I managed to find a couple of hours this morning to print a few variations of the new Haeckel inspired collagraph plates. This was the first one in a monochrome blue. Usually the first print isn't as successful as subsequent ones, but I think that this came out pretty well,

 This is with black ink all over and a rub of blue in the middle, but I'm not sure that I like this combination of colours.

      This was supposed to be blue and orange, but for some reason the orange turned out pink!

This is the blue again, but with a yellow rub in the middle and a roll over of yellow around the sides. I like this colour combination a lot, and will probably do more variations like it.

Shot in the Foot?

This Prickly Pear cactus is growing in a neighbour's front garden. The 'toes' are the flowers and developing fruits, which are edible and can also be made into jam, although I've never done that myself. Walking past, all I saw was a many toed foot, with the damaged sole.

New Plates.

                        These are two new collagraph plates based on the work of Ernst Haeckel.
The one on the right has many different textures, but it remains to be seen if I can bring them all out in the prints. Unfortunately it will probably be some little while before I can have a printing session, but I hope that it won't be too long. It's all very well making these plates, but until a print is made, you just don't know if its worth the effort involved.