First Prints.

 With a couple of free hours this afternoon I did a speedy print from two of the new collagraph plates. This first one above is not very successful, mainly I think because there is too much difference in the height of the various bits of vegetation. The leaves are very flat, but the stems are quite thick, so the paint accumulates on the sides of the stems and the leaves are quite indistinct. I might try to pare down the stems and have another try.

This is much more successful, with some nice marks made by the flower heads and the pieces of stringy bark in the fore ground. I might try painting this one in water colours perhaps.

'Moth Mandala'

          This is my print called 'Moth Mandala' currently on exhibition at Il Bisonte in Florence Italy.
I carved 3 different sizes of the moths, although I ended up using only the 2 smaller ones. The hardest part was dividing the paper up mathematically! The artists were supplied with 7 sheets of  the printing paper (50 cm x 70 cm), but only 5 were required. Even allowing for 2 mistake copies, it was nerve wracking to say the least trying to get 5 copies as perfect as possible.

New Collagraph Plates.

 Now that these 3 plates are sealed with shellac and nice and dry, I can't wait to make prints from them. This one above is a collection of weed seed heads gathered from an unkempt nature strip outside a building site. I pressed them flat for a couple of weeks and then glued them in place on the mount board with some added coarse saw dust for texture at the lower front. They have had  several coats of shellac and the back of the board has also been sealed.

 This one has been partially finished for some months, with the background hills, saw dust vegetation and gauze in front of the hills. It never looked quite right, so now I've glued some tall weed flower heads and some fibrous bits of gum tree bark in the foreground. Again the weed flowers had been pressed flat for some months and the bark was very dry.

This is another old plate that I have added to as I didn't like the earlier version. I had a mental image of a water feature in the middle front area with rocks around it, but it didn't print very convincingly, so now I've added some small flower heads and some coarse saw dust. All I need now is time to have a printing session!

Much Better!

I took my courage in both hands and painted the last of my Pincushion Hakea prints. I could of course print more, but as usual I am anxious to move onto other projects. I don't think that I'll colour the background this time either.

A Spot of Water Colour.

Using the lightest print from my etchings, I attempted to colour the print with watercolour paint.
I didn't want the colour to be too strong, but this is perhaps a bit wishy washy. It's a bit hard to know just what to do with the scribbled background, perhaps I'll stamp over it with some random leaf shapes. Anyway this is just a trial, with the final print still waiting to be painted..........or not at a later stage.

New Drypoint Etching.

 The flower that was chosen by a member of my art group this month was the native plant, the Hakea.
There are many different varieties, but by far the most spectacular is this Pincushion Hakea.
I etched  the image into a piece of acetate and took a 3 prints, but a bit like Goldilocks, one was too dark, one was too light and I think that one is about right.

 This is the one that was too dark, especially the scribbled 'foliage' around the leaves, flower and stems.

 This  one is too light in parts, although the middle of the flower is about right. The leaves etc were all hand scribed, but I used an electric engraving tool for the flower and the marks are much deeper and therefore retain more ink.

This one will do, as I want to colour it with watercolours, so that the flower is the original bright pink against the green foliage. The photo of the actual plant that I used above is a not quite the right colour as it is too scarlet, but it does show the unique structure of the flower.

Autumn

 Like some carelessly tossed feather boa, this length of vine is hanging over a new fence. Did it grow there or was it indeed tossed over?

Wasp Saga.

     A female mud dauber wasp loading her mud chamber with a spider that the developing baby wasps will eat.

                One sealed chamber and one still waiting for a tasty morsel to be placed inside.

                                       Both chambers covered with a protective layer of mud.

The empty pupa case of the new wasp still in place with the other chamber completely empty.
For more pictures of the stages in the building and stocking of the mud daubers nest see Here