Leaf Play

This is the project that I told myself I was supposed to be doing. The rest, all the drawing and Zentangle and such, was just distraction. It's funny how one starts to compulsively doing something if it represents a way to put off doing something else. It's so much more fun to procrastinate.

The idea of using leaves as masks comes from the workshop I took with Martha Wolfe a couple of months ago. I knew before about using masks with Gelli plates, but the class provided a lot of valuable techniques and ideas. This is why I'm a big fan of taking in person classes, even though I often feel exhausted and over-peopled by the end of the day.  I try to recopy my class notes and organize my photos of the projects as soon as possible after the event, so I can fill in unexplained details. Then, even when I may not play with what I've learned for months, I will have basic instructions to trigger my memory.

Anyway, I have been snatching pre-fallen leaves here and there for the past week, sandwiching them between some heavy books so they will act as better masks by being flatter, but not wanting them to dry enough to become brittle or leaving them long enough they become too musty. It worked pretty well with most of them and I am trying to re-press the flattened leaves to use them in a project in their own right.

Now it's time for some spontaneity and unplanned results. Included here are the better results, the ones that didn't come out muddy and needing further attention.

I collected a few stems and leaves, some that were about to fall from neighbors, and any leaves I liked from myself, figuring it's going too far to snatch something that is growing from a stranger, but if it's going to drop off and fall to the sidewalk in the next couple of weeks, nobody will miss it.

This one below is from my side of the nandina hedge I share with a neighbor. The leaves are often mildewed and unhealthy looking on this plant, but they still hold their shape well when pressed.
I used acrylic paints in shades of blue, blue-green, pink, gold; I also went a little crazy with fabric sprays in gold, metallic purple, silver, red. Once the sprays come out there is no stopping me, I become fast and reckless. I was looking for strong contrasts with the background fabrics, which is generally accomplished in the first part of the process; subsequent prints related to the first are much more subtle.

This was purple and maybe silver spray over leaves placed on felt (possibly wool felt, I'm not sure where I got it from, but it feels like wool).

This is an after-print of leaves that had pink paint on them and silver spray paint.

Gold spray paint blocked by nandina leaves over a variegated fabric. The streaks are a part of the fabric.

Gelli plate with blues and pinks rolled on it, some purple spray, with sprays of nandina  leaving leaf shapes on the fabric.

In this one I put a mixture of pink and gold on the Gelli plate (with a few light blue streaks left over from a previous print), masked it with a bamboo branch and applied it to a faintly patterned red fabric. Wow!  I must go looking for more faintly patterned bottom fabrics. It ads variety without being chaotic.

I took the bamboo branch when I was done, dried it, put a bit of new paint on it and pressed it down on top of my sticky backed foam to make a stamp. I've just completed it and will use it to make better defined bamboo prints on some of my murkier background pieces.

Couldn't help but add a bit of graphics to this one. 

This is one of the few pieces I made over marbled fabric that I like. The rest seem too scattered, even with fairly solid paint coverage around the leaves. But I'm thinking any one of them could be made more coherent with a row of backstitch or couching around the leaf margins.

I keep using this old fabric that was used under my soy wax dying project at Craft Napa, filled with green and yellow blobs of Dynaflow paint drips, for other projects. It really comes out random and intense each time. I'm almost out of it, must do more soy wax resist. This is a first print, with the bamboo leaf acting as a mask. The pink and gold paint was laid quite thickly on the Gelli plate, making the green leaves seem to recede, partially because they are more dyed than painted.

Maybe the leaf margins should be left alone because they are so clear, and any pattern added to the background.

Another first print where I used the leaves as a mask, but they still had some paint left over on them from a previous print, so some of that color was added to the fabric.

This piece of cerise pink fabric was from a free box at Stone Mountain and Daughters. I would say this is not one of my colors, but I would also say the same of the pink paint, and I love them together.

Here is another one with hot cerise pink background and gold paint. As I was reusing the leaves, some gold paint remained and added texture to the leaf parts.

This is a second print where I sprayed a lot of crazy paints over a Gelli plate acrylic background. One of the metallic sprays does this thing of reacting with other paints and making metallic dots that spread across the surface.

A strangeness that should be taken advantage of.

The next few images use a multi-part leaf that I snagged from a neighbor's tree before it could fall. They had plenty, I'm sure they won't miss it. Plus, it held it's multi-leaf integrity much better than the wisteria leaf I also snagged. I also made a sticky backed foam print of this leaf. This is over a piece of fabric that I think originally had paste paper squiggles added to the Gelli plate, and then a hexagon stencil pattern aded with red spray paint. I'm not now sure was this a first or second print? The leaf has gold sparkly paint sprayed on it that shows the leaf veins....actually, this may be a second print where I turned the leaf over to catch the paint collected on it from the first print. Anyway, I plan on stitching around the leaf to make it more distinct, maybe adding a few beads to the background.

This is actually the first print of this session. I said WOW, and was encouraged to keep on experimenting.

My local Target store has this amazing fabric that they call natural cheesecloth. But it is nothing like the shifty, sleazy white cheesecloth that is normally sold (and I do love that stuff because of it's ability to shift and stretch). This is a solid, non-stretchy, open weave cotton fabric. And it takes color really well, while remaining slightly translucent. I haven't used it in any final projects yet, but I love it and buy a bit more whenever I am there.

This is a second print done on my left over cloth pre-painted with Dynaflow. I may have spray painted the purplish leaves separately, rather than just relied on color being picked up from the Gelli plate. The colors are fascinating close up.

A second print, looks like it's floating away in the fog.

This one has a wild collection of under-colors; my leaf was placed on top and gold paint was sprayed over the fabric. I want to do some very thin lines of embroidery to emphasize the leaflets over the general wildness.

Another second print of leaves over scored Gelli print background. This may be the wisteria leaflets. 

Second printing of pink paint that was laid on very thickly, showing up as wrinkles on the leaf when I turned it over.

I'm no longer sure of the order of this, but must be a second print. The original background was a set of overlapping circles on a yellow background, very thin lining fabric.

Salvia plants, aka sage, have many different leaf shapes, which can be anything from tiny 1/4 inch wide leaves on drought tolerant shrubs to large 2 inch leaves on 8 foot tropical, water loving shrubs. Some have corms(?) underground and leaves that die back in the winter. This particular sage seems to spread slowly from underground runners, or perhaps reseeds constantly. I have an ever-spreading patch in my front yard, with small clear blue flowers that show up most of the year. I love this plant for it's toughness and not too aggressive behavior. And it belongs to that subcategory of sage that has triangular leaves. They are kind of fuzzy and pockmarked, a bit like culinary sage in it's texture. I snagged 5 leaves and laid them out in a pattern. I have a whole new affection for this plant as an art part.

The fabric is from a scrap bin at Bay Quilts. One day it was filled with narrow strips of fabric that went from one color to another along the strips. I have some more rainbow strips, but these ones came in shades of purple. The irregular white strands are part of the fabric. The darker one is the first print. Then I took the leaves off, re-sprayed the Gelli plate, laid them carefully back on and the second print caught the veins in the paint left from the first print (I always try to put vein side down because it gives the second print more character).

It looks like these are actual leaves rather than prints of leaves!

This is second print made with the thin shoots at the end of a miniature ivy plant that I have invited to cover a tree stump in my front yard. It is also done on the cotton cheesecloth. I was having trouble getting enough color on it, so I did something that I thought might ruin it....I rubbed and scrabbled the back of it, rather than just pressing it. The paint came through the porous surface onto my fingers, but it made this really cool, smoky texture.

Here is a closeup of the rubbing I did on the back, especially in places where any paint had already come through.

These are some individual species geranium leaves, spread out over a gradient background. Again, the fine lines come with the fabric. The leaves were fun to work with because they smelled great.

Here is a first print, with a thick gold and copper background.

The metallic paints seem to confuse my camera in this close up, but the end result looks like rich gold fabric with purple decorations.

Random grape and fig leaves, second print. Less paint, but lots of texture.

This is a first print using nasturtium leaves as a mask. Unless you want this solid circular effect, nasturtium leaves are not great to use as a mask. Flipped over and painted for the veins would be interesting, but these leaves were drying out and becoming very thin and wouldn't put up with further use. So I did my thing of rubbing in the paint to this special cheesecloth and the background shows the directions of the rubbing. So something small and distinct could now be stamped into the empty areas.

So, I made a whole bunch of art parts....that is, things that look cool to varying degrees but don't yet have a purpose. I could feel a bit guilty for making a lot of these and not making many finished pieces from them, but as they say about many "sinfully fun" things, how could something so bad feel so very right? And I had no idea I would end up loving pink mixed with cerise and green! There can't be anything wrong with making something that causes me to cry out "OMG, is that cool or what?!" every time I see it.

It was good to go over these several days after printing them. I can feel related ideas springing to life. I have set aside a couple of the murkier ones to start my experiments with making Zentangle background designs (once ironed onto freezer paper for stability). I'm scared about drawing freehand on fabric, because I'm thinking about how bad it might look and how I might "waste" some valuable art parts, but these particular bits are too funky to finish in their own right and if I can draw Zentangles on paper that I like, why not try them on fabric. I do love to cross boundaries and mix techniques. Waiting for some better colored pens, which are on order but keep not being delivered. They are, in fact, setting some sort of record for bouncing around the city of Sacramento, less that two hours as the car drives,  but apparently most of a week away from delivery as the post office van goes!