Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Persisting with purple

I have been trying to work out exactly what I want to add to the cards I printed over the weekend.

They looked so nice with the late afternoon sun drifting across them.


So I went off and played with some of the many rejects...trying a bit of this and a bit of that.  I tried out cleaning my ink roller and seeing if it made any interesting patterns.



Kind of, sort of, still not sure.

So then I went to town with an embossing plate - just to see what it looked like if I embossed quite strong marks across it. A bit too powerful for me.


I topped and tailed a page with some old silver plate embossing plates, which kind of gave the words a popped out flat panel to show themselves upon.


I rolled a thin copper sheet the length of the page. It had a gentle criss cross pattern.


As a last resort I used a circular embossing (sideways just because) on a page where I had rolled the purple which is all really a bit too much all up! But I tried to close my eyes and filter out the purple and work out if a circular embossing, oriented correctly, at the bottom of a long thing page, could work...and in my mind's eye I think it might. But I am really going to have to try it on one of the ones I printed properly.


I do think the words look lovely on their own as well. 


Sigh. I am forever challenged by my preference for not much at all; and the need to make the work interesting for others. Clearly lots of work still to do...

6 comments:

  1. I always find it fascinating seeing the design invention process of others. And I know that if anyone gives me their ideas as to how things should progress, I very rarely proceed as advised. But I find the input valuable, even if only to help direct me in an opposite direction!
    Having said that, I'm about to say what your printed words call out to me.
    I love that upright determination of the typeface, and the gap for me wants one of your calligraphic swoops - a swoop of determination.
    I work with linocut, and love leaving the cut marks to show in the print, and what I see here is a background of a few faint cut marks, and one swoop of positive determination which changes direction/takes off within the gap.
    Well, that's my two ha'p'worth, and happy to be rejected.

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    1. Olga thank you for taking the time to ponder and reflect and let me know your thoughts - I love it! I put the pondering of the process out there and am glad you had some thoughts and shared them. So interesting to think about a calligraphic mark swooping thru...I will play a bit with marks and options but the addition of something freer than the steadfastness of the upright type; well that could be fun! Go well.

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  2. love seeing your thought processing materialized

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    1. Some of my thought processes are not particularly lovely when materialised Mo - but they are all grist to the mill, non? Go well.

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  3. what makes you think the unadorned version isn't interesting to others? though if I had to pick one of the experiments, I like the top and bottom embossing.

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    1. Thanks Dee - I can sometimes be so spare that things almost aren't there, and I try to challenge myself every now and again to put more in, to add something when I would normally leave it alone. I may have phrased it poorly thinking I needed to do it for others - really I just need to push myself out of my comfort zone. Thanks for your thoughts - I love hearing how people respond to the work in progress...go well.

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I appreciate your thoughts and comments; thanks for taking the time.