Working, working

I have spent time over the weekend working, working, gathering thoughts and trials and ideas for the work going to Sydney in September.

I am happy with the symbols and imagery I have worked out and am now testing ways to reproduce them onto paper.

Working with lino cutting - the first test.

A second run with a few extra white lines evident - following my own instructions from the first run.

And then a trial of all four images done using lino.

I was also attempting a couple of collagraph plates to see how they might work.

 And printed one and compared it to the lino.

What was funniest though was the effort I had put in to get 100 small dots onto a 5cm x 5cm square plate (see above). I had a brain wave to use these sticky dots that I think scrapbookers use; and patiently popped them out of their stickiness and 'stuck' them to the plate. I sprayed a protective coating and left for a few days, thinking I'd be good to ink.

Laugh out loud - they basically just popped themselves off as I moved the plate from here to there!

And these 2.5 were the only ones that really showed any resistance at all.

So, nice idea, but that ain't gonna work.

Adding to my tests and trials I went and cut some small aluminium plates.

And then scraped the edges and sides to smooth them - loved the curly remnants.

 And then tried shellac dots.

And tested the other designs as well, all of which are drying and may get to be etched through the week, and then maybe even printed for comparison.

It's a slow old approach, but I am so grateful I have some clear time to do all the testing, rather than feeling pressured and stressed to produce it all in a rush.