Cath Sheard Art

Tag: print-making

  • Pulling prints

    Reading Martha’s recent posts about her experiments with Gelli Plates did two things; it rekindled my interest in print making, and it encouraged me to buy a Gelli Plate. Tony is working in Wanganui today on the ambulance, and left at 5.45 so I have had all day on my own. My sister Ailsa and nephew Rowan arrived on Friday to visit Mum, but left at 11am this morning. Incidentally, Mum was delighted to see Rowan and knew who he was almost straight away. On the other hand she thought the wool scarf I was carrying was our dog, Faith. Go figure!

    Anyway…I did a bit of work that needed seeing to, did the washing and the dishes and so on, then out with the Gelli Plate and some Golden Fluid Acrylics, plus some stencils I had cut a while back, and some scraps of corrugated cardboard. I do seem to have a thing for hearts, stars and the stripes corrugated cardboard make at the moment.  I love combinations of teal, bright yellow, deep blue and bright green so thought I’d start with those. I got mixed results, partly because initially I didn’t think to mark where the Gelli Plate sat, so my registration was way off. These are not finished – I’ll probably work over the top of these by hand, adding text and more marks, but I think I’m going to love my new way of making prints. Thanks Martha!

  • Back to mapping the land

    Mapping the land #2Over the last few months I have been looking at Aboriginal Art, especially works which map the land using an aerial perspective. It fascinates me, but it turns out I find it quite hard to do; the traditional Western viewpoint is so strongly ingrained. You can see my original post about this here, and some unsuccessful attempts here.  

    Yesterday I was having a ‘play’ day – just spending time with paint, stamps, glue etc. I did some mono-prints, some mixed-media collage, a little scrapbooking. A bit of this and a bit of that. I sifted through a few books on my shelf, including some that show the land from above.

    After I had relaxed a bit I pulled out some heavier weight watercolour paper and did some monoprints using a bonded plastic bag I had saved from something-or-other. I started just casually working on top of the monoprint. And there it was – the first attempt at aerial mapping that starts to approach what I had in mind. It feels like I have broken through an unseen barrier.

  • 29_365 : upload problems last night


    So trying again this morning. Very frustrating…

    More monoprinting – love it 🙂

    This time I used a leaf in the mix, then hand coloured with water soluble crayons. But the water to dissolved the crayon made the ink run a bit. Ah well, all a good learning experience!!

  • 28_365 – make mine a monoprint thanks


    Monoprinting is such fun. All you need is some paper, ink, roller, a piece of glass and a tool of some sort – a pen, brush handle, finger, whatever!

    Roll out the paint, draw the design into it, spray the paper till it’s damp then lay on top of the glass. Burnish with your hand or the back of a spoon and then carefully peel off.

    This particular image is almost identical to one I have done before – I’m not totally sure why, but there is something about it that satisfies me visually.

  • Trial and error


    For the last week or more I’ve been working on linotypes and monoprints – lots of disasters, ink up the wall, and a few okay prints as well. All good fun 🙂

    The blue-bordered one was printed then coloured with water soluble pencils. They both suffer from a sloping horizon – I didn’t notice until I’d cut the lino and pulled the first print off.