The Post Card Project

Upon leaving Florida (tomorrow morning) I am finally getting back to my blog! My current project is making 14 or so post cards, mailing them to friends, retrieving them later, and making them into a piece for my show coming up in late March at Paul Smiths College. Each one is about some aspect of this wonderful trip my sweetie and I have been engaged in since late December. A recent post to my Inkjet Transfers Yahoo Group spurred me to show a few of the cards for which I used inkjet transfers.

 

This card was made from a photo I took of a sweet little cottage in Bradenton, Fl. I printed the image on brochure paper and transferred to the watercolor card using Golden soft gel medium, with a spritz of water on the printed image before placing it facedown on the medium. It turned out very well. The painted borders are cut from the map in the Village of the Arts booklet I received when Mom and I went to studio/gallery tour the Village in January, along with a little strip of lovely painted paper on the right edge.

This card is made from an inkjet transfer on plain paper, using Golden matte medium. A little less successful than the image above but the strong photo of the palm leaflet worked well anyway. I used map fragment for this card as well.

This image transfer is of a gorgeous sunset, made as the one above. I enhanced it with watercolor pencil and spread the pigment with matte medium to make it more durable for its postal journey. Painted handmade paper is attached with matte medium along the bottom and right edge.

Hope you enjoy some tropical thoughts when you look at these. I feel so lucky to have had all this sun while you poor dears are digging out from under the winter!

  

There They Go

On my way down through the mountains yesterday, I dropped off my five 8" x 8" collages at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts for the Big Small Holiday Show (a.k.a. Miniatures Show on the website but originally the show had the former title - much more descriptive, as I don't think of my pieces as miniatures at all). It always feels kind of like leaving your small children at school on the first day of classes - you know they are looking and behaving their best, but you can't help worrying a little and you hope people like them, understand them, and help launch them successfully into the larger world. And here they are for you to see:

In Using an Ax or Hachet - Girl Scout series

Warning for Windy Days - Girl Scout series

Hints for the Cook - Girl Scout series

Trust the Trail

 It is hard to see on the piece above the metal leaf that I applied to the trail going up the steep mountain among rocks and leading to the glowing disk. Maybe a photo would show the technique better - quite perfect for the effect I had in mind. I could not find locally the sizing that is prescribed for gluing down the delicate metal leaf, so I used double-sided adhesive. The fire tower on the left is a transfer from a newspaper using a Chartpak blender marker. The ravens are stenciled on, and the pressed leaf is a spring Tiarella.    

October Pond Lilies

The background on this one is a manipulated photograph printed on air mail paper ("oil paint" effect and faded back); the foreground image is a photo transfer using matte acrylic medium on hot pressed watercolor paper, enhanced with watercolor paint, and cut apart; and the image in the upper right is a scan from an antique print that was inkjet printed, along with the text, on gampi silk tissue and applied with more medium, allowing almost total transparency behind the printed image. I'm still working with the gampi to figure out the best way to print on this delicate paper. In this case, I sprayed the back of the gampi with the temporary bonding spray I use for fabric work and just stuck it firmly to a piece of regular printer paper. It went through my printer perfectly, after several earlier nerve-wracking and unsuccessful tries. (Many thanks to several friends on my inkjet transfer Yahoo group for their suggestions!) The downside to the temporary spray is that it leaves a sticky residue (of course) on the back of the tissue. Not a problem in this case, but not always what I want. 

Every piece is an experiment in one way or another.                            

Friday at the Huyck

Today was the last day of my week at the Huyck Preserve. I finished my piece of art work, packed up my gear, and finally took my walk from Lincoln Pond to the waterfall below Myosotis Lake. The weather was perfect, and the forest - mostly old Hemlock and Sugar Maple with Christmas, Maidenhair, and Wood ferns in herbaceous layer - was very beautiful. The Witch Hazel is blooming now, as it always does in October. See the little fringe-y growths at the twig tips? Those are the flowers.


And here is my collage that combines scans of two of my aster drawings done with technical pen and colored pencil, a scan of an old topographical map of the Preserve, scans of pages from Gray's Manual of Botany, and papers with acrylic paints. I also left my page of the original drawings. 

With the use of some transparency sheets, I also experimented with some photos I took of the light on the Lake. I printed on the transparencies (made for toner-type copiers - not really at all suitable!) with my little inkjet printer using the draft setting to avoid getting too much ink on the sheet. Then I transferred to watercolor paper using Golden matte medium on some and with plain water on others. I also had a small sheet of gold-colored foil (from a chocolate wrapper) and I glued some of it down with the medium before the transfer process. I really learned a lot! So, here are some of the results, showing the finished transfer with its original photo (remember that the transfer is a mirror-image of the photo):

original photo 1

matte medium with gold foil

original photo 2

water on substrate, no burnishing

water on same transparency, burnished

original photo 3

more water on substrate, slight burnishing on blacks

Today was also the day I said good by to the Brits (and 1 Aussie). I enjoyed each of them enormously. Things were awfully quiet once they drove away this morning to get the train in Hudson for NYC. Here they are:

Jenny & Dave

Heather

Carolyn (from Down Under)

Chris & Andy

CSA Interns, Adam, & British Trust Volunteers

Bon Voyage and Safe Travels to All.