Gelatin printing with Versatex Inks and more with Liz Steel

I spent some time yesterday doing another set of prints.  This time I wanted to play with white and black (and so some greys as well) plus red.  I am trying to play with different values.

I am finding that the Versatex inks work well with some of the Extender added to it.  Seems to improve, for me at least, the consistency of the inks.  I also find that the inks take quite a while to dry and so I have them spread out on the hearth in front of the fire.  The cat is quite confused, bless her heart!  I haven't yet put an iron to these prints and am sort of waiting until all of the stickiness of the inks is gone.  The instructions are to iron them from the back and I think I'll put some parchment paper underneath them, just to protect my ironing surface.  I'll let you know.

I also found that because I was printing two days in a row, that is to say, using my stencils two days in a row, that the paper stencils didn't have enough time to dry between printings and most of the paper ones have disintegrated.  In addition, the stencils that I had made out of tyvek separated, so I am going to have to replace them as well.  I had spent a couple of hours yesterday cutting some new stencils out of plastic stencil material with my Xacto knife and found that these new stencils are working very well.  Some of the paper stencils had retained the colour from the day before and I inadvertently printed some of the previous day's colours onto these new pieces.  Not a big deal but it would have been a nuisance if I definitely didn't want that.  (The little vine image is from a wooden item that I bought somewhere, I think in a scapbooking store.  All the images are my own.)

I am also posting one of the little pages I did for Lesson 8 of Liz Steel's class.  Looking at various ways of drawing using inks, inked crosshatching, or just paints.  Different ways to portray texture.  It is such a great class and really does make one consider how they might want to portray an object (or a building, I have yet to get outdoors) and with what sort of detail or emphasis.  Lots to think about.

I have yet to get out amongst 'real people' to draw and paint but I am considering a 'drive and draw' afternoon, but not necessarily at the same time!  But perhaps I'll just draw a pic from my computer taken on holidays....good place to start...I'll put away the car keys and get out my paints!

I'll be back.