Monoprinting & a Printmaking Class

Made some more prints in the week using a variety of papers this time, above - printer paper & in the middle a peacock end feather  resist on a Bible page, the little Bible I rescued from the floor at work when we had a charity bookshelf.

brown paper & gesso with my lovely fennel seed head, book page & gesso with the ghost print of fennel, another ghost print of fennel inside an un-crispy fern resist on cartridge paper & more practising on brown paper. 

 More undefined ferns on book pages - wrong paper, too old plate, mix of ink? I'll have to keep practising :)

 Tools of the trade - Corrine had a link on her page to Carolyn at a Colorful journey who works with 'Gelli' plates & she used something that was described as 'shutters' & I thought I was sure I'd seen some 'packaging' at work that would give a 'shutters' effect. So I had a look - there on the shelf, helping a row of inter dental brushes to stand up neatly in the toothpaste department was a tiny tray, above, top right. Perfect, I thought ;) Typically, I don't seem to have included a sample print.

 These above show the deterioration of the plate, the first is just paint , no shapes, the next a week fern & the last a more distinct end feather & thyme seed head. 

So I stared my Printmaking class again - this is the one I started 2 years ago at West Highland College & the teacher had a bad car accident - it's taken her 18 m to get back to work part time, but this class is being run by another teacher. We got straight into choosing an image for lino printing. I was looking thru a book by Picasso & the image below the fish is what grabbed me but after roughly drawing it I just imagined how many lines I'd have to cut, too many for the first one!

 The top fish is inspired by a watercolor fish I saw in the Picasso book, mines nothing like it, I just thought 'fish'! I drew straight on to tracing paper, didn't even notice then the fish above is 'rubbed' onto the lino by tracing over the tracing paper drawing. I'll define it a little more then cut. I started out thinking I'd leave my drawn lines as the inked part, half way thru I decided I'd cut out the drawn lines so they'd appear white, or whatever color the paper is. Not trying to save my joints, or anything ;) Love taking an open mind to these classes.

from  Three Acrobats, Picasso

I tried to draw a seagull from one of the books - it wasn't moving! if you put your finger over the leg it's a perfect seal - I'm coming on.

This is the sketchbook I made last time, got very excited when we got to the printing stage by taking prints, well just picking up paint, really, when the others were cleaning their plates. Well, why waste the ink? I think teach thought I was mad.

some intriguing Chine Colle, above I thing I got the glue on the wrong side but I like the effect.

Mono printing, the first one is drawing from the back, the 2nd on the plate

 ideas for my lino

The layout i used - teach told me i was getting my money's worth with this one (gulp!) this time I've kept simple...I was just so excited 2 yrs ago, that when we were asked for an image for the following week I ran into the garden & drew anything I could find, desperate. I was so proud to be drawing 'real' things for the first time & amazed at where it all lead me. so I'll take the sketchbook to class once I've added a few pages for this class & add my sketches. There's a section for handouts & instructions, too. I want this class to work for me. such fun to be 'back at college' & getting a little guidance along with other like minded people.