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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!
