Halfway.

This looks as if it's about halfway cut out to me, and so far I'm very happy with how it's looking. Unfortunately I have one very sore finger as a result because of the pressure required to cut through the heavy paper in one clean stroke. I must try and hold the craft knife in a different way for the final half of the cutting I think.

 

Challenge?

 This is a copy of a gelatine print that I made, after I had manipulated it in Photoshop. I just loved the shapes revealed and thought that I might make the whole image into a stencil.

Next I turned the image into black and white, well shades of grey really, to make it clearer to trace out. I did lose a few shapes in the process, but I certainly have enough to be working with.

Here is the traced copy with the areas that I intend to cut away coloured in. Now that really is a challenge!

Winter Weekend.

With Winter just a couple of days away, the weather could have been anything during this past weekend, warm, cold or very cold. We were lucky however as although it was very cold at night, (1°C) the days were sunny and almost warm!

            Early in the mornings the frost on the bracken ferns and other vegetation was so very pretty.

The mist rising from the melting frost with the reflections in the water made an early morning start very worthwhile.

What's The Point?

 I've just had this final print hung at an exhibition, so I thought that I would now put the last few stages of the print up here.The picture below shows the background gelatine print with the hand carved rubber stamps cut out and placed on the print to decide where they should finally go.

 

Below shows the hands printed in black block print ink with lines and circles added in fine-liner pen.

 

Then comes the highlighting of some elements with gold ink.

             With all those pointing fingers the only title that came to mind was 'What's the Point?'

Failed Prints.

 We all have those prints, ones that just don't make the grade, but have parts of them that are O.K.

I decided to assemble bits of a series of gelatin  prints with similar colours and with underwater images into a collage. The bits are all different sizes, but the colours unify the whole.

Oooops!

Unfortunately this is what happens when the base of the spring-form cake tin leaks.......or was not correctly fitted in the first place! Luckily I always bake it on a tray, which this time caught almost all the runaway cake batter.

When I removed the cake tin from the tray with the baked cake batter, I was left with an interesting circular shape, rather like a planet I thought.  I hate waste, so the baked cake batter on the tray will be cut up and served with lemon juice and vanilla yogurt.
 

Lino Rooster

 With very little time available just now, it's taken me a while to start refining my rooster lino cut. I've added the tree to one side, and the foliage at the top

and generally cleaned the print up a little, but it will take at least another session to remove more of the 'noise' of the carving. Here I've tried out a bright colour red on the bird's comb, but it's too bright now, so I'll revert to the darker red in the final print. I also tried out some iridescent blue on the tail feathers, but it really didn't turn out very well, so I probably won't continue with that idea.

Lino Cut

It's a long time since I did any lino cutting, but I took the plunge this week and started to work on an idea that I had for a particular exhibition. This is the first printing from the plate with the addition of a little red and yellow paint, but there is a long way to go from here.