A Forest Walk

A few weeks ago, strolling the creek bank through our forest, I collected debris like twigs, dried plants and fallen bark, with the idea of filling a concertina book with their prints. There was, sadly, also a good number of feathers from birds that had provided area red tail hawks with dinner.

Rather than using a traditional brayer I've had better luck inking plant material with one of those 4-inch white foam rollers from the house paint store.

And, if using Akua brand inks, which only dry through absorption, the rollers never dry out. Just slip them in a plastic bag to keep dust-free and months later they're still soft, pliable and ready to be re-used.

This is cedar, printed with a mix of red oxide and vermillion. I printed by hand, applying pressure with a Speedball hard rubber roller (the black one). Press firmly, make one pass and resist going over the print again!  In the right-hand sample you can spot the smudging from a second pass.

Below, a feather in the blue ink I'd mixed a while back. I was printing on brown wrapping paper, newsprint and other found papers. My palette was going to be this blue, the mixed red and a yellow ochre.

Quite quickly, I was entranced with the feathers and abandoned the plant material.

By this point, I'd added in a bit of grey ink. As detailed as these prints were they became much more interesting once I started re-inking the feathers with a second or third colour. In the printing process the colours would blend, creating subtle and sophisticated variations. You can see the grey mixing with the ochre in the yellow feather above.

I love the colour and detail in the feather on the right, above, and also the one below.

I use newsprint to protect the blankets when I'm printing on the etching press and I save them. Here was one of those happy accidents where the random outline of ink on the newsprint made an interesting background. After that, I started looking for backgrounds to print on. As always, one thing leads to another and where you end up wasn't where you planned to go!

Over several days I made about 100 prints and I don't think I'm done yet. I'll keep playing around re-inking the feathers, using assorted paper and choosing backgrounds. As always, if anything comes of this, I'll let you know. I might even get that concertina book filled...

Meanwhile, here's a short video of prints drying on the line. If you have trouble viewing the video, click on the post title to view in your browser.