November Days

 November has graced us with some very nice weather this year! Although as I write this, rain is coming down in buckets! 

I can't resist taking pictures on my walks. The colors of the foliage are ranging from subtle to vibrant, and it has been great to be able to get out and enjoy them.

                                                        Piscataquog River in Goffstown

Dorrs Pond in Manchester

 Uncanoonuc Mountains in the background

I have been working on some ideas for Christmas cards, and played around today with some textures using a Gelli plate. I had already carved out a series of snowflakes from small easy-cut blocks, to use as traditional stamps on a snowman design. Then I experimented a bit with the Gelli plate to make background textures for other cards. 

Golden Open acrylics

The Gelli plate can be used to make a variety of textures

 

                                                Some variations of the snowflake textures.

I will have some of my reduction block prints in an art show later this month at the Two Villages Art Society Gallery in Contoocook, NH. I framed five of my newest prints to hang in the show. The gallery will be running this exhibit and sale from November 26--December 24th.

You can never have too many cat pictures! Hello from Wiley.

Happy Spring!

I wanted to make some Easter cards for family, so I choose a crocus image as the theme, and carved 3 blocks out of the "soft-cut" plates. I usually do reduction prints with one block, but I wanted to be able to try different colors in the future, and reduction prints leave me without that option. Here are the plates and the original sketch.

Unfortunately I gave away the best ones, but here are some variations.

The one on the left is hand-colored, the center one is the key block, and the last one is printed from all 3 blocks.

I ordered a few new supplies from Blick last week, and was happy to find them on my doorstep yesterday. I ordered some OPEN Golden Acrylic paints (slow drying), printmaking cards and envelopes, Akua print plates, and some  matte stencil film. The acrylic set came with a 5 x 7 Gelli plate. I'm going to explore some monoprinting with my new stuff this week. I saw some cool demos at the NAEA Convention in Chicago two weeks ago, and I wanted to try the materials.

                                                   The Gelli plate demonstration

Stay tuned.