Let's Talk Art Blog

This is a process I've been wanting to try for a while, but I never seemed to find the right moment - until now! Many years ago (I won't tell you how many) I made some prints using the drypoint etching technique where a sharp tool is used to incise marks into a surface which then hold the ink for printing. I loved the results but back then I was using a metal plate and looking back the process felt a little laborious, permanent and costly.

I've spent a few days exploring the printing possibilities offered by a variety of different types of waste packaging. I felt I was about due for a gelli printing session and I've been saving interesting pieces of cardboard and other materials from going straight into the recycling bin; and my pile was growing and growing so I thought it time to have a go!

This sketch had interesting beginnings, being an abandoned demo piece that I started back in October 2023 during Noosa Open Studios. I'm not one for throwing things away, so I thought I'd revisit it and see what I could make of it.

What do you do with your leftovers? They seem to be everywhere! Scraps of paper, snippings and trimmings, blobs of paint and well used palette paper.... To kick off the new year I decided I'd begin, not by having a studio tidy up and a clear-out, as would seem fitting for starting afresh, but by casting around to see what usable paint and paper remnants I had on the bench.

Making this sketch prompted me to think about the place that 'leftovers' have in my art - and not the Christmas kind! What to do with all those snippings of paper and that excess paint on the palette when I come to the end of a project?

I recently set myself a little challenge – to fill a sketchbook using a limited number of materials and monochromatic palette based on black and white. I wondered how much information I could gather from my environment if I sat still in one place for a time, let my eyes wander and just observe and absorb what was around me. In this case, it was mainly foliage of various different kinds.