It's finally spring here and that rare time of year when the sun is warm, but not hot and the mosquitos haven't woken up yet.  Things are sprouting in the garden, but I'm much more successful with carved linocut flowers than real ones.  My dog Basel likes to dig nice sleeping holes and rest in with the flowers and herbs.  He's actually dug up my herb garden so many times that all I have left are the chives.  Herbs must be especially nice to sleep with.  This form of landscaping is not really pleasing to the human eye.  If only I could teach him how to only dig out weeds.
This  large linocut makes up for my lack of flowers in the garden.  It fits in a 16 by 20 inch mat and is done with water soluble printers in and lots of individually carved stamps.
 

Here is my new linocut print, The Story Begins.  I used Speedball printing inks which always go on speckely when printed over other layers of ink.  I quite like the effect because I want the image to capture a strange middle space between reality and fiction where things are fragmented and disolve if you look straight at them.  In this space, you think you know what is what, but if you begin to ponder you may start to doubt.   There can always be a surprise ending...but that is the case with reality too. 
Hope you like it : )

Here's a new little collagraph, made with blue and yellow etching ink and printed on my car jack press.  I only made four of these because I wasn't sure how the handmade watercolour paper would work.  It turned out better than I imagined! I love this handmade paper!  The texture is amazing.
I realize it's been a long time since it blogged.  I think the long winter really got to me this year and it was such a struggle to make myself do things.  I guess I was frozen like everything else.  However, things are looking up!  I now have lots of my prints for sale at the Georgina Art Centre & Gallery in Sutton.  If you get a chance it's worth going to see the fabulous paintings and serrigraphs of Margot Cormier Splane.  Her visual puns will make you laugh and if you're a printmaker you will be awed by her skill!  It's a great exhibition.
This little collagraph is now for sale in my Etsy : )

Sometimes you have to think long and hard about what to create and sometime things just pop out all of a sudden.  Last Sunday I had an idea that I wanted to draw on fabric with a dip pen and these are the result.  I have to think that the ideas were already formed in my subconscious because as soon as I sat down at my desk, I started drawing these.  I have been doing alot of doodling in my sketch book lately and that must have helped to free up ideas.  I wish creating always came so easily!
These little 4 by 4 inch pieces are now for sale in my Etsy : )

When I was in grade five, my hair started making decisions for itself. It grew elaborately from my scalp, with auburn curls twisting upwards and then furling back into a beehive. When I woke up in the morning, I would find myself wrapped in a nest of curls. While I was searching for my blankets, they left the bed before I did, anticipating the movements of my still small feet. 

My mother made oatmeal for breakfast every morning. She would kiss my father out the door and sit down with my siblings and I as we searched for candy dinosaur eggs in the oats. My hair, unconcerned with oatmeal would stray into my sibling’s personal space, and my mother would exclaim, “Oh! Rebecca! You have the most beautiful hair of all girls! Don’t ever lose it. Don’t let anyone take it. Your hair will open doors for you one day.”,  and I thought she was being literal, but I know now that she wasn’t.

On the walk to school, birds would pluck single strands from my head, and I let them. This was the best part of my day. I was happy to know that whatever fear or embarrassment my hair might eventually cause, it would at least provide a sturdy foundation for the nests of neighbourhood birds.

Sometimes at school, small groups of boys would crowd around me and climb inside my hair, one at a time. Sometimes they would be yelling. I’d try to reach in after them, but couldn’t bend my elbow backwards like the double jointed girl in our class. Usually I had to wait for them to find their way out, but some boys got lost. My friend Peter was in my hair for three weeks until he came tumbling out. He told me ‘it smells like peaches!’  and so I didn’t eat fruit for years.

I'm finding that hand-colouring these prints really alters the overall effect and I love the possibilites.   There is much more ink on the print below, and I thought it looked much stormier than the one shown in my previous blog post.  To this one, I added a little gold leaf on the anchor.  I'm going to experiment further with gold leaf.

Both of these prints look better in real life, so I'm going to have to work on my photography skills.  If anyone has any ideas about how to photograph prints with lots of black and white so that they don't look like photocopies please let me know!
They're both now listed in my shop : )

I used a cereal box for the houses and the wheels, sandpaper for the sail, string, sequins and pepper.  For the hull of the boat I scratched out a layer of the mat board.  This was a mistake because the hull in the final print was always too light.  That stuff which looks like dirt is actually pepper.  Lynne Bailey, in her collagraph how-to video talks about something called "carborundum". I didn't have any of that,  but I improvised with pepper.  Everything is well glued down with mat medium and then a couple of coates of varnish are applied.  I like to varnish the back as well to keep it from bending and make it easier to clean.  When I varnished to back I left the plate to dry on some paper and the varnish dripped onto the front and stuck to the paper.  I couldn't get it off and it left those blobs in the lower and upper right corners.  Being in a rush to try this, I carried on.  I don't really mind the look it created. 
Black etching ink is applied once everthing is dry and then the excess is wiped off.  If you want to try this, watch Lynn Bailey's vimeo.  She shows how to do this much better than I can explain.  I used Stonehenge paper which  which was soaked for several hours and then blotted dry with newsprint so that it was damp but not wet.  Here's the resulting print.

I'm so excited by this effect!  It looks kind of old and worn.  I hand tinted the coloured parts with watercolour.   I can't wait to try some more.

About the Press
The Black and White Press is working amazingly well for something constructed my me.  It uses an 8 ton hydraulic car jack and I have learned that this can exert too much pressure.  I've actually cracked a piece of plexiglass, but no harm came to the press itself.  If anyone is interested in building one,  I made a substitution for the complicated ramming cup.  The ramming cup is the part the jack pushes against when you start pressing. The ramming cup required that you bend metal.  Bending metal sounded way too difficult to me, so I searched the hardware store and found this perfect thing!

Never before has anyone been so happy to find a doorstop!  That rubber part is not attached.  Take that out and it makes a perfect ramming cup.  The jack head fits perfectly into the round ring and the metal plate at the back even has holes so you can easily screw it on. 
If anyone has any questions about the press feel free to ask!

Here it is!  My new press.  Thanks to Charles Morgan posting the instructions here.  The task seemed daunting at first, but once I got used to the idea that dealing with lumber is not like putting together Ikea furniture, it was not that hard.    The trouble with lumber is that sizes vary ever so slightly.  Here's a picture of my press upside down, when I was putting the base together.

See that little gap.  Even though all of the vertical boards were all 4 inches, the middle acted as a teeter totter.  I figured an unstable base would be a very bad thing.  The hydraulic car jack (only $38.00)  can move 8 tons which will put a lot of strain on the structure.  The secret to building with lumber, I have found, is sanding.

If it doesn't fit, you make it fit!  You can get sanders quite cheaply now and I wouldn't have wanted to be without it.  My husband, who kindly did some of the sawing for me, said I couldn't sand oak because it would be too hard. Haha, Yes I could, but I wouln't want to do it by hand.
So now I have my press.  It ended up costing me around $225.00  You could definitely make it for less if you had some lumber or used a discarded countertop.  I bought cheap kitchen cabinet doors for the base and the platen.  The melamine finish makes the press easy to clean.
Here's one of my first test prints.  I wanted to see if there was enough pressure to embosse a leaf skeleton.  First I rubbed the skeleton with a watercolor crayon, then I put it on a piece of acrylic that I had painted with dish soap and watercolor paint.  I used damp paper.

It worked! You can't see the embossing in this picture but it is embossed and the watercolor transfered nicely without being grainy.  The press groans and creaks and at first I was a little afraid  it would explode under the pressure.  I'm getting used to it now and I don't see any signs of cracking or stress.  I think it just likes to complain!  The beauty of this press is that if any parts give way, they'll be easy and inexpensive to replace.
I look forward to doing some more printmaking soon!