Saturday Playtime

Yesterday some friends and I got together for a playtime and had a great time. We used to meet once a month with a teacher but as she is no longer able to join us we decided to meet up on our own. We all have various skills and experience and I am very excited at the prospect of sharing a day's play and ideas.

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It may not seem very adventurous, but I decided to do some printing. I have been reading about printing with fruit and thought I would have a go, especially as I had a suitable wrinkly apple in the fridge. (Check out this blog for printing ideas - amended 11 March)

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These samples above are mostly from the apple which I cut across the middle to get the vaguely star shape you can see. The two very pale images were a huge surprise and came from my attempts to print with a half lemon. The lemon would not accept the acrylic paint at all! I could only get a very pale print. Even more surprising was the subsequent apple print for which I used the same piece of sponge to apply the paint that I had used for the lemon. The paint turned all lumpy and has given me a great texture. I can only think that the acid in the lemon has reacted with the paint.

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Somewhere else on the 'net I saw a recommendation for printing with jigsaw pieces so I tried that too. I sealed a piece of cardboard with PVA and then stuck some jigsaw pieces on and sealed the whole thing again with PVA. It hasn't stood up to the printing too well so I shall have to give it a few more coats of PVA.

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I really like the effects the jigsaw pieces give and there are also some really interesting negative shapes which I only noticed when my friend suggested I make some random sponge marks in the areas between the jigsaw shapes. I'm looking forward to having a play with this page in Photoshop.

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The next two photos are of string stamps I made the day before the workshop. The strings are stuck onto plastic sheeting which came from the x-ray department at the hospital (they had been thrown out). I wasn't sure the PVA would stick and it needed to be left till it was completely dry.

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This wavy kind of stamp is quite nice but I think I need to handle it quite lightly. I think I will make some more along these lines.

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I really like this squiggly stamp below. It has a lot of design potential and is made with string on the same plastic as the wavy one. The only disadvantage of the plastic is that it makes for a flat stamp and it is easy to catch the edge of the plastic on the paper.

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As well as the prints above I made separate prints into a small notebook that I will keep just for print samples and I also printed onto fabric with some fabric paints. That fabric is very much a work in progress which I will probably post here when I've done a bit more - that's if I can remember what I did by then!