Printmaking

 

I messed up my knee recently, so walking and standing are a bit of a pain right now, but that’s O.K.!  I’ve decided I can sit and make art…….PERFECT!  Hubby is cooking, mowing, weeding and walking the dog and I’m sitting in my chair, with my ice pack, making stuff like this….

a rubber stamp/printing plate!

 

 

The July/August issue of Cloth*Paper*Scissors had a feature  article about…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

carving stamps and making a stencil mask written by Lisa Thorpe.

Intrigued…I bolding set forth by first drawing a sketch of three figs, because we have a fig tree loaded with fruit, so they were cheap models!

Then I traced the drawing onto a piece of rubber stamp material and carved the stamp that I showed you, above.

 

 

 

Cutting the stencil masks was a little more difficult….you have to think about positive and negative space and you know that is never easy!

Finally, got those two cut……

 

 

 

 

 

after putting the “fig stencil” in place to mask that area, I then stenciled the background, shown here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next you go in and use the background stencil to protect the background and then you paint in the figs!

 

 

If you are still with me, here is where the stamp/printing plate comes in……with ink or paint you stamp over the painted background……..and this is the result…..

The colors I choose for my first printing attempt were too dark!  So, I trimmed away more rubber from the stamp and used a little lighter shade of paint colors……this is the result.

Same stamp, using only black StaZon ink………

The colors are brighter in real life, not this dark…..but here is finished product!

 

It is clearly worth the effort.