Tag: embossing

Continuing with my Sketchbook

I lasted showed some experiments I did into leaf printing, bleach and batik that turned out quite well, I wanted to continue with some techniques I had looked into trying as I felt they would work well for my leaves and plants.

Lino Experiments

I experimented here with a range of different materials and colour with the lino printing, using old book pages and a number of different coloured backgrounds. The impression of the white on the black paper is quite good I think, and it allowed for adding the gold and silver pens onto it as well which i think worked well. I had fun with this, mixing a few of my techniques together to make creative new pieces.

Rubbings

I used charcoal and oil pastels to create rubbings of the leaves, which picked up their skeletons quite well, which I was focused on when I was trying to print the designs as well. I quite like the green one as it shows a good size of the leaf and a lot of detail of the different veins in it.

Oil Pastels

I created these oil pastel images which started out as quite dense colouring, however with a cocktail stick, scratching away some of the colour allowed for a totally different level of detail in the design. I quite like this, and observing a real leaf while I did it helped to get the lines and veins in the right places.

Paintings

For these images, I used some basic flat shades of the greens, pinks and browns to create this gradual shading idea with the block colours. Using the darker green shades where the image would have been darker and fading to the lightest colour which I imagined the highlights would be.

These pieces were done using the same pink colour just diluted with either water or white paint. I think these actually turned out okay and I like how they are bold but with a little gradual shading in them.

Contours

I wanted to paint the contours of the images here, but I think the holly leaf ended up just looking like more of a line drawing, so I tried to do it with the nuts instead. I think this one is better and shows more shape to it, but this does look more like a strong light has been shone onto it so half is visible.

Embossing

I also tried embossing here to create the leaf skeleton, I think it would have been nicer if the lines had been thinner but I only had the one size brush. I do love the effect of embossing and I think I would like to order some more colours to try this with.

Stippling and Crosshatching

I experimented with stippling and crosshatching here using a few media, such as paints, ink, pen and pencil. I think my favourite is the pen stippling one, which took a long time but I think it looks like a graphic motif which could work well if I experimented with changing its colour more.

Trying Embossing

I thought about embossing when I was designing cards because I was thinking about how to improve on them once they had been printed successfully, I looked into foiling too with the printing companies, I think i could have looked into methods of doing this at home but with the printing companies they are able to make it a lot neater and embossed as well. I ordered some embossing powder in the light green colour as I thought it would stand out quite nicely from the darker greens in my work.

So this was the pen that I ordered for it, it was only a couple of pounds from hobbycraft. I tried it out on some plain paper first.

The first photo shows the nearly see-through lettering, which is just drawn onto the paper using the pen. My pen has a choice of a pen or a brush-like end, so its whether you want a flowing line or a more rigid looking design. You then add a generous amount of the powder over the top, and then tip it off, making sure you save as much as possible. This is then how they look in the bottom image. You next need a heat gun.

It is quite hard to tell the difference here but there was a slight lightening to it after the heat gun had been applied for a couple of minutes. I thought this was quite a long time and googled it and a found a little tutorial, that showed the results within a couple of seconds, so I decided to try a different paper, and printed out the front of one of my card designs.

This next example on the happy shows it off much better, the colour difference and the fact that this took a couple of seconds to lighten and visibly look like it was melting together.

I tried one last example here on a different substrate, using the front of my sketchbook to try it out. I think it would look good if I practice my lettering, I used to do calligraphy and I think this style would look a lot better. I also think the powder that I ordered is probably not the best quality, I did not want to spend a great deal of money testing something like this out if it was not going to work. I think a nice gold would look good instead and a better quality would give the finish that I want for it. I would probably order that again if I create something that I would like to put some pattern and texture into.

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