Addicted to Print

Help! I can't stop mono-printing and screen printing! Most of today's prints are on cotton fabric. The poppy (or in some cases the background around it), was masked with a freezer paper stencil before thickened dye was screen printed through commercial stencils to give interesting patterns. The very pale ones were made with left over ink on the screen, reactivated with clear dye thickener.

I've also treated myself to some white block printing ink to use on darker coloured backgrounds. The flower below on a hand dyed cotton, the teapot on black cotton and the 2nd teapot on hand dyed cartridge paper.

Gelli, Print, Wash, Cut and Stitch

I've been using these Khadi paper zig-zag books for printing and stitching. The paper is really strong and thick and can take lots of wet paint. First I mono-printed the flowers and then used Procion dye to colour them and the background, I used wet on wet to get lovely graduated colours. Next more flowers were added by stitching on layers of organza from both sides and then cutting the excess away. I deliberately placed some of the images over the folds in the book so I could cut partly round them to give a pop out effect.

The tea pots were first printed with a Gelli plate using stencils and combed paint in a range of blues. I then mono-printed on the teapots which were based on a photo I took of a teapot at the art gallery. I made one teapot smaller on a photocopier and overlapped them. The teapots were painted with dye which lets the print underneath shine through. Again I placed the images on the fold so they could be popped out.

These poppies were mono-printed on ordinary cartridge paper and then coloured with dye and popped out along the fold.

I don't think these are finished yet, I may work into them more with bleach or paint. Come back soon to see.

Anzac Day Sketchbook Pages

With Anzac day here in Australia my poppy drawings took on new meaning. This page has a cut and bleached photo from the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. There's also a cut out, acrylic painting, text, and collage.

The page below also features a photograph from the memorial - can you spot my surname? The photography was scratched and distressed with sandpaper. The seed head was an accidental stencil from painting acrylics through the cut out from the page above. The nice watery blue on the right is just paint that accidentally soaked through from the page beyond.

Changing Scale

I've taken some of my poppy pictures and enlarged or reduced them on the photocopier. Here they all are laid out on the table. I love the bright colours next to the black and white. I collaged some of them back into my sketchbook and added more colour and detail.

Gelli Drawings

Today I tried mono-print drawings with my Gelli plate rather than with a glass sheet. The technique works well on fabric but not at all on paper. With the extra weight of the paper the surface make good contact all over the Gelli and you just end up with a black rectangle. I used a biro, chopstick and skewer to make the marks on the fabric. As the Gelli is so much softer than a glass sheet you need to use only a tiny bit of pressure and remember that if you press too hard with a sharp object like a skewer then you will damage the plate. Because the fabric removes all the ink from the Gelli where you have pressed down you can get a nice inverted colour print from the ink remaining on the plate.  The prints I made today have a softer look than those made with a glass sheet which I like.

Here I used up the remaining ink with a standard Gelli print using a texture plate and paper mask.

Intense Colour

Today I wanted really bright colours. Instead of watercolours which can be a bit wishy-washy I mixed a small amount of Procion fabric dye, this can be used just like watercolours on paper and fabric and has the advantage of being really intense. I also used Inktense water soluble pencils for the outlines. Unlike ordinary water soluble pencil the colours are much brighter and are permanent once activated with water and then dried. Some of the paintings are hand drawn whilst others use rubbings with oil pastel or Shiva sticks. I sprinkled on some salt in places to give a nice bubbly texture. I'll work back into some of these pictures again with some bleach and more colour.

These pieces are handmade paper which was impressed with leaves whilst it was being made. I used Shiva sticks to rub over the raised leaf patterns to highlight the texture.

This is a blind contour mono-print of a table lamp onto fabric. I've added pattern with rubbings and colour with dye.