Collagraph "River Valley"

Here is my favorite collagraph from my printing session on Thursday.  You ink up your plate each time you want to take a print.  This one is my favorite of the day because I added a touch of blue and green to the basically warm palette.  

I usually love the plates.  Most of the shapes are cut from paper, some using "punches" from the craft store - others just cut with scissors or an exacto blade.  The dark mountain area is from a textured medical tape you might wrap an injured finger with - the texture trapped a lot of ink!  The river shape came from some embossed paper which I added depressed lines to with a ball point pen. I also love the skeleton leaves so they were added on the two top corners and a half curve on the bottom edge.  Remember - no color or value from the plate is transferred onto the actual print - just the ink that gets trapped in the edges.

Quilt - Occupied

I don't think the title works - but at some point I thought it was funny - since the spirals look almost like an octopus to me. This piece was made in a Esterita Austin's Workshop at Asilomar.  Once again, we were told to bring a photo for inspiration and my photo was pretty darn good to start with.  After putting the pieces together we were taught to "shade" the piece with paint - I had never done that before, but heck - it worked. I also was pleased to be able to use some of my "screen printed" fabrics.

More Arts & Crafts Applique - Woodsie

Here are the blocks that went into "Woodsie".  they are interspersed throughout the piece, but in this shot you can see just the applique blocks. I had a great time "shopping" for these designs on the web and then interpreting them in cloth.  

"Woodsie" is huge!  Something like 110" x 110". A friend of ours commissioned me to make this quilt for their 25th wedding anniversary - isn't that the nicest idea!  I had 4 months to make it - and it was a big job!  You can't see it, but in the light frame I quilted personal icons - dance shoes, their kid, horse, and house, etc., just to make it a bit personal.  No one will ever see this quilt this way - after all - it IS a bed quilt and I had to hire a professional photography with a large studio to get this snap.  But - I do love the way the lights are sprinkled around.

Arts & Crafts Applique: "Kaleido-cycle"

I love the Arts and Crafts style.  After I learned to applique, I got bored with the typical blocks, so I branched out and searched for design ideas.  The web is full of designs and here are a few that I developed. I combined them with the kaleidoscope block and love the magic that appeared.   Some of the fabrics I used are so improbable, but I learned as long as the values were kept consistent the design would work.

Spades

I love this design of my "Spades" collagraph.  But the truth is that the materials are very simple.  First the skeleton leaf - the craft store variety, but it surely takes the ink well!  The top corner is made from some kind of fiber netting.  The diagonal lines coming from the base are slivers of window screening - love the way that took the ink too.  The rest of the shapes were cut/punched out from paper (no I am not crazy enough to cut out all those tiny circles)!  Oh - I just saw/remembered that photo corner at the base of the "mast".  

Once I have the plate glued down - I give it a coat of glue to "seal" it all.  Then when I get a chance to use a press, I ink up the plate and "scrub" the ink into the edges and then wipe a lot of the ink off. Each print is done one at a time, depending on my color whim of the moment.  They all look the same, but they are all different!  These turned out to be the best prints of the day.  

Mother Ship - Collagraph and Plate

My interest in printmaking has been rekindled.  Yesterday's upload of a monoprint was done in class and it is very spontaneous and immediate. I like to design a little more carefully like the collagraph above.  The permanent plate is on the Right - made from cheese cloth, fibers and paper glued down to a piece of mat board and sealed with mat medium.  When you are ready to print, you apply ink onto the plate, rub off a lot of the ink so only the edges are revealed, and then print it on paper on an etching press.  I still have the plate and can print it over and over again - each time changing the color of the inks, but using the same plate/design.

By the way - the reversed teardrop rectangle is a piece of paper glued down during the process - and that is called chin colle.