Monday, October 11, 2010

More Morning Walk Treasures

My reunion last week in Maryland was fabulous - will report more later, but in the meantime, it was good to be back in my studio. On a recent morning walk - yup - more mushrooms. This little guy was so small but a perfect shape for printing. I also found some wonderful leaves to try on the screen.
I sliced this mushroom to a 1/4" thickness. It was much easier to slice than the bigger ones, not as rubbery and it sliced like butter. I love the shape.
I crumpled some unprinted newsprint to lay underneath for additional texture
and laid the mushrooms on top to put under the blank silkscreen.
I'm screening with the color "nutmeg" - a gorgeous color, looks like paprika. You can see half the screen is still waiting for thickened dye.
So here is the prepared screen, drying, after which I'll screen it onto fabric using a print paste mix. I really like the texture the crumpled paper gives to the background.
I lifted the mushrooms carefully off the back of the screen and was able to use them again which was amazing since they are so fragile. This was bronze dye, another great color for this technique.
The parts of the mushroom that were cut away were reassembled to create another mushroom. I love the texture on the underside of the cap and hope it shows in printing. I also put some bark and lichen down for texture. The lichen was a bit thick so I don't know how it will do.
Here are the reassembled mushrooms underneath the screen with thickened dye. I think they may be pretty cool.
This is the backside of the screen - the objects will stick to the screen. Sometimes they're easy to remove when the screen is dry, sometimes not, so I've gotten in the habit of taking them off right away.
And looky, looky at these wonderful caps with the thickened dye on them - wow, great stamps. I will only get one stamping out of them as they're so fragile.
And here they are, stamped on fabric and quite a bit of texture. I'm liking these mushrooms.
So now the waiting game - for the screens to dry.
Until next time

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