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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!)
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!
