Spring has Sprung.

Although we are still having very wintry weather, the flowers and deciduous trees are all bursting out in spring flower and leaf. This tree below is a wonderful oak tree that spreads for meters on either side of the huge old trunk. The branches run parallel to the ground for a long way and the local children delight in bouncing up and down on them imagining that they are riding a horse no doubt. Our children did it and now our grandchildren are doing it too.

Black & White

 We are all so used to seeing everything in colour these days, especially our photos. A photographic group that I belong to decided that this month's topic would be flowers in black and white.

     Above is a very dainty Abutalon, or Chinese Lantern flower which is a pale orange colour.

                                                 This is an orange and green succulent flower.

I really liked the black stripes on this Broad Bean flower, something that I would probably not have noticed if I hadn't decided to take a picture of it for the monthly theme.

          A Hellebore flower, which is a greenish maroon when not converted to black and white.

Pretty Flowers!

 Taking the dog for a walk in the park this afternoon I found these very beautifully drawn and coloured flowers on the footpath beside the carpark. They are all uniform in size so I assume that the artist used a stencil and coloured them in with waterproof chalk or crayons.

                   Something to bring a smile to the face in these gloomy days of lockdown.

The Next Step.

 Now that I have carved six or so new moth stamps it's time to start using them on some of the gelatin printed pages of my insect and bird book. I have lots of previously carved beetle stamps, but I think that they're all too large for this small book. I also have some dragonfly stamps that I carved for a previous project but most of them are too large as well unfortunately. I can see that I have a lot more stamp carving ahead of me! It's a very good thing to be occupied with, in this our 6th lock down designed to slow the spread of the Corona virus.

Each signature will have a full double page spread in the middle, above is the first one almost completed.

I think that some of the leaf prints would benefit from being outlined against the busy backgrounds.

New Stamps.

 After a break of some weeks I have eventually got back to carving the stamps to add to the little book that I started making some time ago. Having printed all the backgrounds on my gelatin plate and added the vegetation using the same medium, it's now time to move to stamping bird and insect images onto those same pages.

Although these stamps are almost finished, I can still see some minor details that need fixing, and I want to carve a lot more too. It's a good start!

More Beetles.

 I've always loved photographing insects, especially beetles and butterflies. The 3 beetles below are all specimens that I've found on my bush walks, however the blue spotted weevil is the only one still alive.

                                              Here some ants are making off with their prize.

You would think that a beetle would try to camouflage itself, but this one clearly wanted to show off!

Close up and Personal.

 A couple of years ago I bought an inexpensive set of 3 clip on lenses for my phone, but apart from a little bit of playing around at the time I haven't really used them. However this morning I listened to a Zoom presentation on macro-photography and marveled at the prices people could pay for their lenses and extension tubes these days. I sold all of mine quite some time ago, as I didn't think that I would be using my old SLR cameras and their multitude of lenses again. I have bought several Point and Shoot digital cameras since then and have found that they do all that I want to do at this stage in my life. But just for fun I had another play with the phone close up lens and was quite amazed at what it could do. Below is picture close up and personal of a beetle's face, which I think is really interesting, even though not all of it is spot on in focus.

Fabric?

This gelatin print above was made using hand cut masks and stencils based on potato masher designs and a rubber 'thing' that I found while out walking. I carved a couple of rubber stamps too to add to the effect. Someone took one look at it and immediately said 'kimono fabric'. I hadn't thought of that, but she's right, it does look like a design for fabric.

This one I called Cosmic Lights, and again I worked it on a handmade gelatin plate.  I made a texture board using a piece of cardboard and the splashes of orange were added later with acrylic paint.