Growing Tips: Part 1

Over the summer I worked on two projects which I haven't yet had time to write about.
This first one was something I had been wanting to do for a couple of years.
I am trying to make better boxes and am rather fond of the shapes of the tips of growing plants.
So I made a triangular box to contain the work.  Well in fact I made two. One to see how it would work and then the one which would house these " Growing Tips"

Roughs and first go at the box.... Yes, its not simple to make a triangular box that works nicely!

first trials...

 


It was an exercise in combining printmaking. (Lino and collagraph) with some scanned digital work.
In my mind there would be a small field of emerging plants and on the back of each plant a tip about how to encourage growth in both plants and people.

First I designed and cut the blocks for the tips and proofed them:

I wanted them to stand up so made lots of paper trials to try to find a stiff paper that would laminate and print well as well as stand up. I eventually chose some 300gm watercolour paper. I could have used a thin card mill board but then there was the problem of cutting a tab... there is always an issue. And it seems to me that lots of time is spent trying to solve these incidental problems than actually doing the creative work.

I decided to make a small background shape to add to each design to add some more colour and made a registration sheet to try to get the designs in registration. Trying not to waste paper I jigsaw cut the paper to fit in as many triangles as possible. I have three different sizes of triangles.

 

Printing was interesting but rather time consuming. I tried a few different techniques including rainbow rolls.. some worked and some didn't and the watercolour surface sometimes poses a challenge to print, getting the ink consistency and pressures right were a bit tricky.
In the end I had 26 images good enough to use.

I had printed some papers to cover the boxes ... nice!

    

more to come :)