"Foliage" - Art Elements Theme Challenge

This month Caroline chose such a wonderful theme - "Foliage". I was surprised that I actually managed to get quite a lot done because we also were on holidays this month... and at work I had a lot to do to get the huge pile done that accumulated during my vacation. *sighs*

Some of the images you may also have seen (the cat prints) since I wrote about how I create my printing plates at Art Elements ("Printing plates and art prints").

So here are my creations. There no coherent plan but rather I simply tried to get the theme incorporated in all my work and sketches. This mixed media piece started out as some card board I used to clean my brayer on top. I love the gold accents. It is a acrylic gold paint from the PrimAcryl series from Horadam and I was surprised how nice it is.

I also brought a new sketch book and my art supplies with me during travelling including my new ceramic test palettes and also the empty make up tins that I tested for their usability as water color palette. ;)

I played less than I expected but that was due to the fact that I didn't like the paper quality. It was an expensive water color sketch book, sadly not 100% cotton because they had none but a high quality one. And nope, not usable for water color. Still, it worked quite well with gouache. 

I love vintage tins!

My muted / earthy / dark palette... there are three additional wells in the lowest row with gouache and Formentera red earth water color (not on the swatch card).

My rather bright / greeny pallette also with additional gouache in the lowest row (and also not on the swatch card). I nearly used ALL yellow gouache due to the paper problem and thankfully I had a lot of white gouache in both palettes. I used it in combination with water color to get more gouache paint because that worked quite well.

The lizards took me several days to finish simply because of all the leaves... and I had to wait in between for everything to dry. The risk running with my hand over some wet paint was... well... it happened ;)

But I so love them! They feel like summer and sunshine. I am thinking about getting some paintings done in this style as well as to scan these to and print them on thin cotton fabric.

And next to each other...

Also some simple nice studies of leaves as well as color studies.

These are the foliage inspired cat prints I wrote about over at Art Elements. My collection was short of a cat printing plate (shocking, I know!) and I combined the theme cat with the challenge theme.

The prints are done on paper as well as MDF board. The coloured backgrounds are made with gouache and the prints with water-based linoprinting ink (both from Schmincke).

The right print is without any foliage... but dots... I mean.... DOTS! Somehow they make everything better (like the lizards!).

This cat print over the yellowish/mustard background is my favorite print of all cat prints. I think I will keep this one for myself an frame it. 

I played a little bit more with gouache + MDF board + simplified foliage and am surprised how well I like this style. Sadly my camera was not able to capture the true turquoise and purple undertones so you will have to take my word that there is much more contrast in the paintings in real life (also I corrected the paint problems on the left leaf).

Since we were on holidays, I also missed a lot of the annual gel printing challenge in September from Birgit Koopsen.... but I managed to get some done. This one fits her monochrome prompt and our foliage theme! 

Thank you for joining us this month! My entries were a little bit over the place but I have to say, I really enjoyed all my experiments with paint and different styles and love the outcome! 

Please have a look at all the participants this month! :)

AE Team
Lesley  
Susan 
Marsha  
Claire  (you are here)
Cathy 
Jenny  
Niky  
Caroline

Guests
Dawn  
Hope  
Alison  
Beth & Evie  
Laurie  
Kathy  
Linda 
Sarajo  
Michelle 
Tammy  
Divya  
Karen  
Alysen  
Mary  
Cat  
Jill 
Sarah
Anita

"Selkies" - Art Elements Theme Challenge

This month's theme challenge at Art Elements was chosen by Jenny - Selkies. The inspirations she provided at her Pinterest board were lovely and I though whether I should use the atmosphere, colors and textures as basis for my work... but actually I stuck to a rather literal approach.

I played with water colors and as much as I love this medium, it seems I need a break. Or maybe only holidays ;) But I am using my water color too heavy handed. I like the seal, I don't like the woman.... overworked. I show you all the pieces since there are a lot that go wrong. And that is okay, I still learn from every piece.

I also played with monprints and layered image transfers. If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen my latest layered prints with my brother's dog as motiv. I also wanted to create some prints for the theme challenge. 

This seal face is my absolute favorite one. I don't know why my camera was playing crazy with the colors. It is a little bit warmer, more turquoise... but I could not adjust the color even later on my computer. Still, love it! 

And there are some layered prints that I leave as they are. This is not one of them! I work on my prints after the print process with pens and paints. Here I used a white polychromos pen to lighten the area around his head on the left side, I used a Copic brush pen to enhance some dark areas at the eyes and around hhead, added the dark whiskers, and last but not least I used a uni ball white gel pen to enhance the white highlights in the eyes. They were already there but needed some more contrast.

Somehow none of my prints for the selkies theme worked like I wanted. Truth to be told, that was frustrating! But after a day rest, or maybe two, I could work on the prints until I liked them. In Htis one the seal was not perfect, so I used the Copic brush pen again to add his nose, dots, enhance some shadows... Seeing the image now in the blog post, I think I will go over with the white polychromos pen as well to add some more highlights. I like to use colored pencils for soft effects. 

Here is the third print, it also didn't work. I was too impatient and used too thick layers of paint. It is not that I don't realize what I am doing wrong. But sometimes by different brain parts seem not to want to work together! ^^ I will still use this and work with it to get the silhouettes from the seal and the woman out of the background.

Here is another example of an idea that did not work. Ok, I think it worked in principle, I wanted to carve out only the highlights of the body to create a nice light and shadow effect. But I am also in the process of using up materials I have and I had some master cut carving blocks left. I never tried them out before and I will never ever buy them again! The material crumbles while carving even with freshly sharpened Pfeil tools, it holds the printing paint badly (worse than rubber or linoleum), and even with a lot of pressure it prints badly. Maybe if I would have a printing press, it would turn out better. But I can print with linoleum without printing press quite well! So...nope... never again! Maybe I will try out this idea with a rubber or linoleum printing plate.  

Now to another stamp that worked out well! With my favorite blue rubber carving material! Made in this kind of retro style that I love to work with right now.

Thank you for joining us! I had hoped to create more prints but I thought at least I could show you some of my struggles. Most of the time I am also only showing what worked and that often gives the wrong impression. ;) Thank you Jenny for a wonderful challenge and please, everyone, have a look at all the participants!

Guests: 

Paisleylizard.com/blog

Anordinarymiracleday.wordpress.com     

Ebbeadandmetalworks.blogspot.com

Bay-moon-design.blogspot.com

AE team: 

Lesley

Jen

Caroline

Claire (you are here)

Laney

Cathy

Niky

Lindsay

Jenny

"All that bugs me..." - Insects (AE June theme challenge)

This months theme challenge at Art Elements (AE) was given by Diana Ptaszynksi: Insects. What a perfect topic for me and actually one that came up quite often in my work. Bet it the use of beetle wings in my jewelery or paintings or handcarved stamps.

It is a long time ago since I carved my own stamps. But since I love monoprinting, mixed media and handmade books, I wanted some bigger motives to use. I also had some new rubber carving material to try out (the blue "stuff" and new being relative meaning unopened but lying around for a long time). I love carving rubber because I don't need a press to get good impressions. But in the past I used real rubbers (to hard or stable to really carve well) or a rubber carving material at my craft supply store (at that time the only available but it sadly crumbles a lot).

What shall I say? I love it! It is smooth and easy to carve and IT DOES NOT CRUMBLE! The "crumbling" problem was one of the reasons I stopped carving my own stamps - to frustrating and heartbreaking. The motives of course insects, in this case I started with a beetle. 

Here you see my reference image. I actually cut it out in the desired size and draw the silhouette on my stamp to have some guidelines. You could also use some copy paper but test it first with the rubber. The one I had didn't work at all on the rubber surface while it worked perfectly on paper.

And printed on a colorful background (MDF) with black archival ink. Since the background was quite dark I used some coloured pencils to draw around and play a little bit with it.

Just look at the background, love it!

In my carving process I stop in between and stamp the image just to get an overall impression and see where I still have to change something.

With a lot of background and the wings not finished...

Nearly finished but with some broken lines I didn't like. Take care to really stop in between. I know myself, after the first rough carving I need a break (or start another one) and leave the fine details for another day. Never ever worked out if I did it all in one go.

Of course I also had to test them with ceramic clay. They leave a nice impression. 

I only smoothed out the outer areas where you would see the carved background lines and a little bit in the middle. 

Both will be decorative tiles (I think).

They are still drying but I am so curious how they will turn out. I will add some black underglaze to highlight the details (not covering the whole stamped image) and am thinking about a transparent glaze on the insect and an opaque around. What also could be interesting is to add some graphic designs on the background. Mh... still thinking...

After I got my love for carving back I thought also to give linocuts another try. Our professional art supply store takes care to only provide fresh linoleum for carving since it gets hard and brittle after some time.

It is still in progress but I am surprised how easy and nice it was to carve (also way cheaper than the blue rubber "stuff"). There are differences but I just need some training to adjust. Oh, and better tools...  but that is a wish for nearly any technique, nai? *sighs*

Also I don't have a printing press and just with hand pressure it really doesn't print as well as the rubber ones. But I'll see if I can somehow adjust a little bit. All these prints are still test prints in between just to see how the carving comes along.

  

You know, I have a lot of my own stamps and I was thinking to show you my older insect stamps made with different rubber materials. I also love to see how my own abilities evolved (or are not so restricted anymore with problematic materials? Who knows ;) ). 

So I went to have a look and thought, oh well, why not show you my whole collections? Here it is! (there could be some smaller ones be missing but then I wouldn't even know where to start looking for them). 

As you see I used every tiny wee bit! I so loved the big dragon fly image but sadly it crumbled (right side). It is a good material for stamps like the birds and leaves (top row, middle image) because they don't have small areas but are rather massive. But I am handling my octopus stamp with the most utter care! 

And I nearly forgot my pegasus, and my tree, and my spider, and my little owl, and my flower....! I definitely need to use them all again somehow! I hope I am not the only one sometimes forgetting the little treasures in their stash.

As a last impression: Here are all my other insect stamps I made a long time ago. As a reference I stamped the little beetle on my finger nail too.

Diana, thank you so much for this theme, it was perfect for me!
Now please have a look what everybody else made!

Guests

Mona Arnott 

Melissa Trudinger 

Sarajo Wentling

Divya N

Art Elements Team

Cathy Spivey Mendola

Diana Ptaszynski

Lesley Watt 

Caroline Dewison

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Lindsay Starr

Niky Sayers

Claire Fabian (you are here)