Printmaking for the WetCanvas WDE

I have been watching lots of printmaking video's on YouTube lately. Looking for new techniques of printmaking. I love Belinda del Pesco's video's. She explains and shows different printmaking techniques in a short video. I was looking for a image to use as a first experiment for a matboard collograph (Link to Belinda's video). And I found one in the WetCanvas Drawing event for this weekend.

This is the image and my first cut in matboard (coated with gloss medium) with an X-Acto knive.

After another coat of medium, I rubbed the ink into the cuts.

And with a cloth, a tissue and a q-tip I rubbed some of the ink of for the high lights

I cut 3 pieces of Mulberry paper into 8" x 10" size pieces and soaked them in water. The print plate is 4" x 6". I placed the paper on the printing plate and started rubbing with the back of a spoon, and rubbing, and rubbing....

After the first print I made some more cuts in the plate. This is the second print and is the best of the three. And drying on the washing line as you see ;-). Great new technique!! Thanks Belinda!

When they are all dry I will see if I will work on them a bit more, maybe with watercolors, or ink, maybe colored pencils. Lots of opportunities, will certainly try this again.

Sketches from Greece

I enjoyed a great holiday in Greece the last weeks, and returned home yesterday. I will show you some of the sketches I made in my Stillman and Birn Alpha journal. I have been working with pen, watersoluble pens (Tombow and Speedball) and watercolors.

This is a sketch I made sitting on the Golden Beach in Gialova, with a great view of the rocks in the clearblue water and the island opposite the beach. With pen and watercolors.

And some more sketches (in chronological order)

 

Methoni castle

Monoprinting and linocuts

I am still enjoying playing with my new Gelli plate! I am trying different ways of using the plate and am creating lovely papers.

I have an idea that I need to work on, combining gelli plate printing with linocuts, collage, and more. I carved a pelican in lino and printed it onto BKF Rives printing paper. The example below is handcolored with watercolors. I am still figuring out how to best print the background on the Gelli Plate and I will keep you updated when I found the right process. For the meantime... enjoy

And as Albert Einstein said: "Creativity is contagious, pass it on"