Not Quite Right.

 Although I had a fun couple of hours printing from my moulding paste plates, the end results aren't quite what I had hoped for.

 I obviously had the paste too thick and the depressions are too deep for the paint to get down into the crevasses.

           That isn't to say I can't use the prints, I can and will, but I had hoped for something different.

All these are done in the blue-green range so that I can convert them in Photoshop to various shades of orange on black, which is what I want for a new project that is simmering on the back burner.

Third in the Series.

 This is the 3rd. and probably last in the spiral series. It uses all the new stamps that I carved recently, and also the spiral moulding paste board for the backgound. This above is now printed onto fabric.

This is a detail of the fabric above, showing the various stamps and the background printing. I have over stamped the main motifs with various gold coloured paint and with a tiny bit of copper as well, but the paint really doesn't show up in these photos. Now for the appliqued motifs that I used in the previous 2 works, but first some machine stitching.

Texture Plates.

 I wasn't happy with a few of the moulding paste plates that I made, so I covered them over with new paste and worked hard to make interesting textures.

                                       This above was made with dried and pressed Bracken Fern.

                                             This was just my finger tips in plastic gloves.

And this was with a dried seed pod, not sure if this one will be any use actually. Hopefully I'll have time tomorrow to do a couple of quick prints and see if they're worth playing around with. Otherwise I'll cover them up and try again.  I wonder how many coats I can apply before it all cracks off ??

More Textured Boards.

 It was a bitterly cold and wet day today, so it was a good opportunity to continue playing. I made up another plaster board last night, vaguely like a swamp with reeds, using some pressed foliage that I had to hand.

 At each stage I took a photograph and this was one before I added more blue to the 'water', so that when I inverted it in Photoshop, the white areas became black and the blue became orange. I mentally called this The Tar Pit!

Here it is again with some of the pink removed, but in removing the pink I inadvertently lightened the black, which I really didn't intend to do. Easy to fix however.

Moulding Paste Experiments.

 The moulding paste panel dried over night and after sanding off the pointy bits I gave it a couple of coats of acrylic varnish to make it a bit more water proof.

I then used it to give background texture on the gelatine printing plate.  In the process the panel picked up lots of colour and ended up like this. I'm very happy with the results on the panel as seen above, but not quite so happy with the gelatine prints.

                                       They may end up O.K after a bit of Photoshopping!

New Technique.

 I thought that I might try making a printing plate with an old piece of foamcore, using modelling paste for some texture.
I've never tried doing this before, and I'm hoping that I might be able to print some interesting background papers for more gelatine printing.

I used some of my recent spiral stamps to make an overall random pattern of spirals in the modelling paste. I'll leave it to dry over night and see what happens. It could of course crack the first time I try to use it, but that may in itself create some interesting textures for printing. I'll have to sand down some of the pointier edges as they would probably cut the paper when I try to press down on the plate. Watch this space!

One Last Stamp.

         I wanted just one more of the large stamps for the 3rd and final piece in this series.

      It will of course be used on the gelatine plate so a bit of roughness doesn't really mater.

                                     This is the 5th stamps in this group of related images.

New Stamps

                                                                   4 new stamps in all.

                  This pattern is made up of the new spiral stamp plus one of the old ones.

As usual, I can't help trying out a simple inversion in Photoshop just to see what it looks like.......

I like it!