Still Hooked on Mushrooms!

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I can't stop making mushrooms! But this will be the last post on these little guys -- promise!

Think it's the fun of finding mushroom-like texture among my stash of printed paper. Like here:

This is a piece of cream coloured copy paper that I had sprayed with coffee and then the red currant botanical dye I'd made in the summer. It made a great mushroom!

The "soil" is sumi ink-and-coffee-sprayed calligraphy paper. Love how the little mushroom, below, turned out. Made me wish I'd used a lighter piece of the printed paper for the stem of the big mushroom.

But that has been the delight of this series -- learning something new all the time. Thought I might just run through a few of the latest mushroom collages with a bit of a show-and-tell and some background on the printed papers. 

This is newsprint, above,  printed with a piece of laminate flooring. Love how clearly the knot came through.

This one was copy paper used to lift the ink on a gelatin plate to get the "ghost" or detailed print of a leafy plant. That's the grey. Then I inked a piece of waxed paper with black, laid it gently on the print and did some random nonsense writing on the back. Last, I laid the paper over a texture plate and rolled with a brayer inked up with pink.

This one is a page from an Asian children's book, used as a clean up sheet for the brayer. This was back when I was using Speedball printing ink and they do re-activate with water. Some turquoise had dried on the glass plate used for rolling out ink and I gave it a spritz. The book page with the random yellow and greens, pressed into the spritzed ink, got this great mottled effect.

Layering the colours, here yellow and grey, to get texture. Or red and grey.

A sponge wrapped in twine (would anyone actually use this on their skin?) also makes great texture.

Above, a magazine page overprinted with acrylic paint on a gel plate. I'll never be able to repeat this beautiful pattern!

This is a crossword overprinted with an iron oxide mix, then overprinted again with this leafy carved block in white. Love how the bits of black from the crossword show through. Like shadow in the forest.

These are just cleanup sheets from inking up leaves from the garden. Again, it's the dappled look that appeals.

The stripey paper came from printing with corrigated cardboard and the pattern on the small mushroom was from an old crocheted doily. Anything is fair game in the studio.

And here's the back:

Had the most fun with these tiny mushrooms! So much so, I made a short video:

If you stuck along this far, I so appreciate it! See you soon. And no more mushrooms!

More Mushroom Mania!

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Following up on the last post, where I was playing around with mushroom images, this post shares some of my explorations of backgrounds. I'd been using a sponge and stamp pad ink to block in a touch of shadow and give a bit of definition to the mushroom shapes. That led to trying to create an ethereal background with the ink. Like this:

Then I went scrounging through the scrap bins, looking for papers that might work as a background. Found these: A Japanese flecked paper and a painted paper.

Below, is a grey print pulled off a remnant of laminate flooring. (On an aside, that stuff takes ink wonderfully and prints like a dream!)

One of the better choices was this grey copy paper below. Think I'd used it as a clean-up sheet for some gelatin printing. Love ochre on grey!

To ground the mushrooms I added a strip of tissue, printed with splats of an inked grass seed-head a while back.

Then I got a brainwave. I could make a forest floor with date stampers. Where did that idea come from? Could it be because I have an entire box or two of discarded office stamps? What's the connection between a date stamper and a litter of fallen leaves? Have no idea!

My first inclination was to pretty much stamp a linear pattern.

Then I tried jumbling the stamps, this way and that.

And then I moved on. These numbers are from years back. (Confession here -- I only got around to carving four, six and the two fives!)

And got this:

Wow! Now my heart was singing! I'm trying to analyze why this works for me. The monochrome palette? How that bit of bar code ties in with the numbers? Think it has something to do with the sharp shapes of the numbers and the openness they create. I tried ornate letter stamps and didn't get the same sense of satisfaction.

Here's one more with the numbers:

And one with taupe numbers:

Like this as well. It's a challenge for me to maintain a lot of the white background and yet ground the image and keep the composition interesting. It's not everyone's "cup of tea" but, when I feel it's working, it brings such joy.

This is the explorative phase -- trying out multiple versions to discover what speaks to me. If, and when, these mushrooms gel into a cohesive series, I'll get back to you. Thanks so much for following along!

Mushroom Mockups!

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With only bits of time lately, I wanted a small project I could chip away at. Spring this year was unusually wet and for a while mushrooms were popping up everywhere. I've always loved their iconic shapes and a dig through my printed paper stash offered up mushroom-y possibilities. More fantastical than accurate, mind you!

 

I browsed through a stack of mushroom identification guides (yay for libraries!). Initially, I got drawn into reproducing detail while exploiting text and other graphic elements of the papers. Like this:

Then I went super simple:

These pseudo-Shaggy Manes cracked me up. They remind me of Victorian lampshades! Then I sketched out rough mushroom shapes, sized for a 5x7-inch card, and created 'viewing' stencils. Like this:

It was interesting to see how much I could simplify an image and still have it read 'mushroom'. Laying the newsprint stencil over printed paper I searched for pattern.

The mushroom below was from a gel-printed magazine page. I started looking for incomplete prints where the white of the paper showed through. To me, the white replicates a bounce of sunlight.

At this point I also started mixing and matching papers for the caps and stems (think they are referred to as stipes). A bit like playing dress-up!

 

And having a lot of fun tilting the caps. A certain angle would suddenly inject a jolt of personality! The mushroom would look stately, even somewhat sombre, but with a few degrees of change to its position the cap could take on a jaunty whimsical vibe.

 

Played around with tall-stemmed guys -- liking the squatty look!

Also started augmenting the sunlight and shadow with a bit of judicious ink pad stamping for the dark side.

This got me to thinking of backgrounds. Since I had a sponge and ink pad at hand, I gave this a try:

 

Then I was off and running, playing around with a variety of backgrounds, aiming to ground the mushroom and vaguely mimic their forest floor home. More on that in the next post! As always, thank you for following my art adventures. It's truly appreciated. Until next time!