The trees are carved into a plate of mountboard and printed to damp paper. Once dry the template was used to create the exact shape for the ink texture to be applied and left to dry.
Scottish Mist
How was that done?
Category Archives: animals
“Elusive” – Red Squirrel
Elusive. They are aren’t they. We are so lucky to have made effort to maintain pockets of populations of red squirrels in the UK. I saw my first on Brownsea Island in my 20’s. It wasn’t until 30 years later I saw red squirrels again, this time in Scotland.
This original design of mixed media artwork is a collagraph print (produced off a plate through a printing press), with 24 ct gold leaf and acrylic paints.
Total size framed 43 x 33 cm £255. Contact me on email diane@dianeyoungartist.com
What is the Story?
Why buy art?
Why do you put pictures on your walls, if you do? What might strike you as important in a picture? The obvious reason would be subject matter, maybe size for the space, the colours depicted, the colours of your room, what the image makes you feel, and other things that we cannot really put into words. You can just know if a picture is right for you. They can just speak to you, if you know what I mean.
So why paint a scene like this?
At the time I was painting images of animals in mythology. My research led me to Korean Shaman imagery; I finally decided on the challenge of composing my own version of this traditional image from Korean culture.
The tiger’s size is exaggerated to convey it’s power and strength, the Shaman’s eyes are closed to display his trust in the tiger and how he feels at one with the world. You can almost feel the tigers warm breath on the Shaman’s toes! A trusting peaceful relationship with nature. Crane’s are often depicted in Asian art as they represent longevity, purity and peace. The mountain is of significance as a holy place. The Shaman shown in traditional images vary and are in fact a multicultural icon.
“Koreans still very strongly maintain traditions as old as their culture itself, that mountains are especially holy places of communication of energies between heaven and earth. The sacred aspects of these mountains and their relationships with the human communities around them are embodied in the ideas and icons of Sanshin [Mountain-spirit].”
This original painting above is available to buy online priced £225 with Free P&P.
Photo and text courtesy of Sacred Sites. Read more about Korea Culture here.
Love Badgers – show your love for this iconic British mammal!
We are lucky enough to see the occasional badger in our garden snooping after fallen bird feed and turfing up the lawn; it is more like a grass patch than a lawn to be honest, so we don’t mind! Time has really flown since I created the “Love Badgers” design; a limited edition print of the original painting is still available now online.
Decal window stickers which look great in you car window; available now in both of the designs below “Love Badgers” (Sorry Badgers are now sold out! Please contact me if you would like to reserve some from a future order) and “Love Greyhounds & Lurchers”. Buy online £1.75 each plus just £1 postage. Click the images or buttons below for links to buy online.
How the decal sticker looks in my car windscreen – no glue clings to glass, easy to remove.
One limited edition print available of Love Badgers.
Original painting of Love Greyhounds/Lurchers is also for sale here.
Foxy Reference for a #Collagraph Print
How does your creativity come to you? There are so many different ways and means for us to form our new ideas. If only (sigh) we could produce utterly original work from referring only to the inside one’s head this is in reality impossible. ldeas cannot possibly arrive from nothing can they? Even if you suddenly have this visual composition roaming in your head based on mathematics or a fantasy style painting inspired by a walk in the woods last week, or an abstract work depicting the feeling of being by the sea since your beach holiday these refer to information already stored which has been absorbed from the world outside of you. And of course we are also informed by seeing other artists’ work; whether that art is produced by your friend or your art group or an Old Master of times gone; this could be incidental or deliberate. It is wasted energy trying to avoid what has been seen or done already!
I usually get a pretty fixed idea of how I want something to look and try to find reference for this from all manner of things. I have stores of actual photos, reference books, lots of my own photos of nature despite how rubbish they might be, snaps from TV programmes, and holiday pics on my PC and also digital storage of old drawings and my paintings. Of course the internet is really useful in figuring out the form of say animals in action, or the way the moon reflects on water, plus there are photographers who allow direct referencing to their work too on Facebook, useful obviously if you really have not seen an alligator up close or such the like.
Sometimes I forget about looking at my own work, most of which will not have been used for final work and even if it has I can use bits of it again.
I am in the process of creating a collagraph plate and looking at fox references at the moment. I want one loping along, with a purposeful gait. I had been looking around on the internet to translate my imagining into some sort of reality but (yet again) could not find the exact form I was looking for. After procrastinating (yet again!) I found a photo taken a long while ago of a fox by chance in a lane local to my house. Unfortunately he was looking back so his head is effectively missing.
Thanks to the search documents facility bringing up everything with “fox” in on my PC I could then see that one of my finished paintings could be useful for the fox head. The Fox and The Grapes below is an original painting still and it is for sale.
The painting is 29 x 33 cm priced at £150. If you are interested in the painting please email me here diane@dianeyoungartist.com or message me here on facebook .
Fortunately I have photoshop so a quick flip and some mucking about with the shapes I have pulled them together and have a perfect reference point to move forward to the next stage of putting my next Collagraph print together. Ta da!
THE FOX AND THE GOLDEN BELL
If you are interested in my work either click the link or email me here diane@dianeyoungartist.com or message me here on facebook .
Sundarbans #Seahorses
I am trying to hold back on this work in progress and not ruin it by any rash decision making.
The seahorses and the arc are collagraph print, and what appears as coral is watercolour based on the pattern made by the Sundarbans where hundreds of rivers meet the Bay of Bengal.
Sense of Place : Venacher Stag
This is an original collagraph print made from a combination of my photo of Venacher Loch in the Trossachs placed as textures of the trees and the loch within in the form of a rutting stag. These beasts naturally inhabit both the Highlands and the North Lowlands of Scotland. We were there in 2017 visiting friends when we went to Venacher Loch for a walk and a lochside supper when I took the photo; such a serene and beautiful location.
Me & My Shadow
I love macro photography; the great reveal of these photos once transferred to my PC never fails to amaze me. This shield bug needed rescuing from our porch after perching on a fairy light.
#Ammonite #Fossil #Collagraph Plate
Some process images. I have cut through the drawing to directly carve out my mountboard plate. Glue is applied with cocktail sticks to make the lines which will be highlights or white; a very absorbing task! The larger image is where I am peeling the mountboard for the required texture. This is then sealed with button polish, dried, inked and printed.
Click Here to find the result!
Reviewing your own artwork
It is hard isn’t it! Some decisions on composition are really easy but at other times they are really hard. I mean there are potentially so many variables, and reviewing the results, deciding on their worthiness is often really difficult.
Sometimes you want a certain detail left in, you think this detail is a good idea! But for some reason this great idea does not work. We want the design to hold together well and be more than the sum of its’ parts. Sadly this can mean letting go of something we really would have preferred stayed as part of the composition.
I had wanted a back drop and small details (telegraph poles) in these small collagraphs (5″ x 7″); but small details on small collagraphs made with mount board do not work so well. Possibly because working so small is not correct with this medium, or perhaps I need to hone my technique. I do like a graphic look, that is with a white background and sharp profile. I mean what am I doing creating something that does not fit with what I like in the first place!?
Truly I am quite new to the printmaking medium. And I should experiment, but my final print below is a lesson in the “less is more” motto.
Having taken out the small details that are not working, and also the backdrop, this is the final result which I feel works best.
What do you think?
Leaf Print #collagraph #prussianblue
Having collected a few bits and bobs before the summer ended I have a few dried leaves to test out on my printmaking journey.
Merry Christmas with #Collagraph Baubles
These are handpressed cutouts with textures added and using different coloured inks including the lovely gold! As I do not have a press these have been put together in photoshop taking up their correct positions in the universe. It would probably be a good idea for me to make some more Christmassy prints for next year right now as my Christmas creativity never gets started in time for the current year.
#Collagraph #printmaker experiments
So excited that my pebble tower turned out so well on a printing press at the New Brewery Arts centre; the others are a bit haphazard. I just so love the plates themselves, but printing by rubbing on the back of the paper even with a proper brayer does not have the sway and consistency of a printing press itself.
Face to Face – Printmaking
This is one of my series of “Dancer” prints of a red crested crane. The image on the right is the plate that it was printed from. I love the plates almost more than the prints themselves. They are a piece of artwork in their own right with textures, carved lines and spaces and items stuck on, finished with a layer of shellac which produces the ochre coloured finish.
One problem I have encountered with printmaking unlike painting is reproducing it digitally here. Both scanning and photographs do not quite make the grade and (although I say it myself!) the images are much better in the flesh.
The wings are created by using a paper case used for cooking muffins.
Diane Young Artist 