I wanted to get my animal portraits printed on fabric so I could have a go at adding some embellishment in stitch over the top and adding texture to the fur, I thought this could also be done with felting fluff which could work quite nicely.
Printed Portraits
My problem with the portraits were the rough endings and the points that cut off due to the size on the page, I used some foliage to cover this up for the sake of it looking like a proper placement design. I think I could do this better with more thought out motifs here but this is something I can work on as I create more foliage motifs. For now, I wanted to get these printed to work on, as I think this will be a nice effect and start the early experiments in adding stitch to my final designs and this is a good practice. I thought too if I kept putting this job off it might be something that I just never got done, taking into account the printing time and dispatching time as well.
On my brief timetable, I planned a local walk to the woodlands to abide with restrctions, but also gather the photos I needed. I have not found the time to go out and exercise much through this, so a good walk was probably for the best today anyway!
I had visions of finding mushrooms in this quite overcast and shadowy environment, but I actually found a lot more textural elements that I liked, finding a lot of different patterns in the bark and the fallen trees.
Texture in the trees
There was such a variety of patterns in the bark, from the quite straight dents to the long straight parts in the stumps. I also found uneven barks and moss which adds to it even more.
Plant and Leaves
I found a lot of good bunches of leaves for motifs, some of which I had seen before which I expected because the woodland was so close to my own garden, I also thought about how they would look as motifs when I took the pictures, as I want the motifs to have quite realistic shapes and growth to actually resemble the leaves.
Exploring the Environment
The woodlands had suffered some damage lately with the winds, so avoiding these fallen trees was important. I found a lot of small holes around an old fallen stump, I thought this was quite a good little home for some voles or something, and as I was moving around to get a good angle, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye the other side of it. I also found a little battered shed which links with my idea of exploring how animals can make use of ‘man-made’ structures in the wild, such as hedgehogs using sheds. Lastly I found a lot of bonfire type piles, probably just from the farmer cleaning up as there are sheep in the fields next to the woodlands and its where they shelter during bad or cold weather. I also found around 15 nestboxes on the trees, they looked old but I peeked inside two of them, finding eggs from a blue tit and from a pied flycatcher. It would be really interesting to watch activities of these birds, so i’m wondering about setting up my wildlife camera out there somewhere and seeing what I could capture.
I decided to play with lino again and make motifs out of it rather than a placement piece that could have been continued.
Drawing on the Lino
The first step is to sketch out the design on the lino, I decided here that I was going to carve out the leaf skeletons, and then actually cut out the shape of the leaf so I had a nice clean stamp effect with the finished lino piece.
Carving
I tried to use a mixture of widths in the lines to give a more realistic kind of effect to it, I was following the more natural flow of a leaf skeleton rather than uniform it more into a pattern.
The End Result
The end result here is interesting and I think the veins look good, the next step was to just cut around the edges of the leaves to make it into a stamp.
All Cut Out
The designs here were cut out, I used a simple pair of large scissors to do this as it was quite tough to get through.
The First Prints
The prints produced were interesting, I will probably do another post when it gets to creating some fun patterns out of them.
At the bottom of my garden we have a small field, only an acre which is enough to have a few grazing sheep to keep the grass down. I do not go in the field very often, it’s pretty much the only place on my property where neighbours could see me and the garden being overgrown and full of plants is more interesting.
I have been around the garden quite a few times, taking photos, looking for and collecting leaves to print with, and looking for signs of hedgehogs and setting up my camera. Then I thought about the field’s hedgerows, there are two quite grown sides so i thought it was worth a few minutes wander to see if there was anything interesting there.
The sheep, and the two hedgerows
So here you can see the two hedgerows with a variety of different shapes trees and leaves along it, and my new friends who decided to follow me!
A variety of the plants I found on the way
I found a good range of plants, from the usual oak trees and shrubs, to the odd holly bush, a foxglove and some interesting looking leaves. I tried to capture all the photos like they could be a motif, so using the last few inches of a branch with the flowering ends to them that would look good as a motif.
The mystery Plant
I also found this mystery plant last week, growing out of a pit where we dump concrete waste until it gets covered over in the future, but I noticed this quite large and unusual plant growing out of it. It had a very thick stem in the middle with these large leaves coming off of it, and when I went to pull a leaf off of it to print with, I found out there were spikes on the underside of it. I send images of it to my nan, who is a long-time gardener and grower, she made a few suggestions but could not identify it easily. I send it to a groupchat of my friends last night and luckily one of their mothers works in the National Trust, and identified it as a teasel. Teasels usually grow thistle type flowers out of the top, so without this it is hard to identify. Teasels are good for feeding some small birds, such as goldfinches, when they do flower, so I think this is definitely worth keeping!
I had quite a good time today with the experiments that I did, actually producing quite nice results that I am happy with.
Collage and Acrylic
I led on from the work I did yesterday with outlines and skeletons, but I added the collage element into it to give it a more interesting background. I was able to use black paint then because the detail and colour of the backing paper stood out enough so black was a good contrast colour over the top. I particularly like the use of the old book paper, the colour of it is great and the writing is so small that it does look more like a pattern.
Bleach and Batik
While using paint on the leaf skeletons to add colour, i thought about how bleach removes colour, and managed to get quite an interesting print of it here removing the colour of the tissue paper, as well as adding as a resist when watercolour was added over the top of it. The batik was fun to experiment with, and I got quite a nice clear image from it using the wax, I wonder if there is a way to mix these two techniques and take things further maybe with both of them.
The first image shows playing with wet paint and clingfilm which did create some nice results, this is similar to what i did using the leaves yesterday to create a resist-ish technique to capture the lines and shape as it dries. Again I think this could work combined with batik or something, but I may need to find a harsher way of making the impressions into the paint.
I found doing the experiments with leaf skeletons quite fun, and went to bed thinking of ways that I could try and play around with this further. I thought about bleach firstly, because I thought I could just paint it onto the leaf like I was able to do with the paint and print it onto a coloured surface.
So the bleaching involved painting on the underside of the leaf where the veins are more prominent. Then using this I firmly pressed it on the tissue paper and a blank piece of paper to try and paint over later to add as a resist. The removal of the tissue paper colour came out way better than I thought it would, my experience with bleach before is that it seeps and runs very easily.
Batik Experiments
Batik was quite enjoyable, I usually use a large pot on the stove but found there was usually a lot of wax left over from this and no where to really store it as I do not do it very often, so I decided to use a little candle here which worked out well. I painted the design outline around with the wax which dried pretty much straight away so it had to be applied very quickly. I then painted over this with watercolour and as you can see, it avoided the wax and just slipped of it. When the paint had then dried, I ironed the top of it with a piece of newspaper over the top, which melted the wax and the newspaper takes away most of it. I then did the same thing on the back to try and remove as much as I could. I also painted wax on the edges of a leaf and on the veins of it as well, I gave this a quick burst under the iron onto paper, which transferred the shape across which is basically the closest thing to getting the leaf skeleton done in batik.
Using a mix of old and patterned papers I made a few collages here with the effects of ripping the papers into shapes and layering them up, adding pen or ink then over the top adds an interesting effect to them and makes them seem more complete. Finally the last two images show a clingfilm print, painting wet watercolour on paper and then putting scrunched clingfilm over the top until it dries. I then cut this into the shape of the leaf, and with the one before, I left the shape of the leaf in it in the clingfilm and just scrunched the areas around it.
I went outside to find some leaves that I could use as a resist and a print, trying to find some leaves that had quite prominent skeleton veins so they would make a stand out print hopefully.
Early Experiments
Just using a paintbrush I tried to make some bold shapes using the leaves. In the first image I tried to put the leaf as a resist but painting over the edges, this worked well for some and a little harder for others as they got softer out of daylight and picked. I tried a more splattered effect as well by flicking the paint around the shape of the leaves, again where the leaves were flat it was much better than where it was slightly risen or bumpy and did not get a great effect to it. I then used some sponges to add colour to the leaves, then printed these onto the page which worked out well.
The last photo shows a watercoloured background that I added to leaves to as it dried, this then left an impression on the page of the leaves, which is quite hard to see here but does have quite a nice flat effect to it.
The next idea I had was to try and do a monoprint using the leaf, the first step was to use the roller to make an even spread on this white board of paint, this probably could have been more even but I didnt mind a little bit of difference as the main part of it was going to be the leaf.
Place the leaf on top of this and push it down onto the paint, do not rub it, just push on it firmly all over it. When you pull it off then, there is an interesting print of left behind in the ink.
Next, place the leaf on another bit of paper out of the way, then put another fresh sheet on top of the ink with the leaf impression into it. When peeled off, this results in the third picture, a negative almost of what you see in the ink. This part is now done, so going back to the leaf, press down on this again firmly, and when this is removed, it will leave behind a print of the veins skeleton. Make sure to do this on the underside of the leaf, as this is where the veins are more prominent.
I also tried rolling the ink directly onto the leaf and printing it this way, I think this is probably the clearest print showing the most veins, the problem with this dock leaf is that the main vein in the centre is so big that it does not print the ink either side of it.
I have enjoyed this, I was thinking of trying to play round with bleach printing tomorrow as well using the leaves, so I’ll see how this turns out.
So I have been putting out some biscuits for the hedgehogs regularly for the last couple of nights, I finish my car phonecall with my boyfriend at around 11:30 to midnight then creep down the garden with my torch, hoping to catch a hedgehog in the act of eating from the bowl.
The Food Bowl
I was taking photos at midnight when I went out, and then in the morning as well, even at midnight something was missing, so it seems the more of the food was being eaten after this in the early hours. I thought about rats, but I thought more likely they would eat it all, bite the carton, or take it back to their nest. The biscuits are just neatly eaten, sometimes with a few remaining, the fuller amount is taking about two days to go down too so hopefully I will encourage a little habitat here. I am going to look into building a little hotel for them as well, a little place they can settle in during the daytime. My method of sneaking down the garden every night was not working, so I started researching into a wildlife camera.
Wildlife Camera
Today it came! I wasn’t actually expecting it for at least another week, with the restrictions and buying it from Ebay, I thought it was going to be a lot longer. I set it up anyway around a nearby tree, making sure it had a good view of the food tray. I’ve set it to record 15 seconds of footage when it is triggered by motion, this means with the wind it could take a little grass moving as enough to record, I am concerned that hedgehogs move so slowly that it might not be enough, but if I do not get anything tonight, I,ll try putting the camera right on the floor near the bowl, and concealing it with rocks or something.
I have been doing a couple of contests with Spoonflower at the moment, what I enjoy about them is that they give you a theme, and it is often so unique you do not have anything that just happens to fit into it, so I enjoy taking a few hours a week to work towards this. I usually start by taking the theme and mindmapping a little, so for this one I thought of creatures that produce their own light, and thought of jellyfish and plankton, I thought jellyfish would make a really nice pattern.
I decide on a colour scheme, this is sometimes dictated by the contest but was not for this one, but I decided to go with a range of blues for the ocean, and a bright contrasting pink for the jellyfish. I used procreate to make my motifs, and used a couple of tools add light and luminescence to them, such as the light brush tool and the glowing dots.
Tile of Entry
I created this repeating tile for it, I quite like it as it has a range of contrast and bold colours in it. I have now entered this for the contest and will be looking into the upcoming contests to be prepared for them, I would like to enter every week but I did miss last week’s due to working hard on my submission, but the previous two weeks, Pastel Cafe and East Fork, can be seen below.
East Fork and Pastel Cafe Entries
I like that these are testing my skills and making me learn new things, I am trying out new colours and objects I have never drawn before, so I hope to keep this going for my own development.
Using some of my research photos, I created a few initial drawing pages based on the first hand images I put together.
Fineliner Drawings
To start I wanted to use one of my favourite media, I thought this would help me work on form and shape and encourage me to produce something really nice first, to get me excited about the project. I think if I just went straight into acrylic paints, or lino, something I am not as practiced in, I may feel discouraged with the results if they do not turn as well as I think these pages did.
I like the use of the patterns in the leaves, I think they work quite well because of the range of patterns used. Some of the lines in the leaves too are placed to show a bend or a sense of depth to the leaf, this works better when the leaf is folded or something as it then has two layers to it.
Watercolour Pages
I decided to experiment on watercolour, as it is quite a soft media that can produce some nice results. Combining this with the fineliner pens too is nice because it then produces this more graphic representation of the subject, which I think works well. I think some things here look better than others. I think working in a realistic watercolour style is difficult and something I need to work on more as I do not think the results of this worked as well as it could have.
Double page spreads
I took a couple of my printed research photos here and decided to work directly from these on the double page spread, I worked using the colour scheme I wanted to work in with these bright watercolour paints and fineliner. I think these designs have worked well but I need to expand a little more, I think coloured pencils would be a nice next step to try a sense of realism then moving into more exciting experiments, such as bleach and lino, as I find interesting motifs within my research pictures and carry on trying them out in various techniques.
Tahlia Paige 