Back to mapping the land

Over 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.