Working on some #collagraph plates. Landscapes this time. Will add in some sand and more texture. These are recycled pizza boxes layered 2 deep. They make a nice cheap replacement for mat board. Just a bit of work to cut them to size and then laminate with PVA. Hoping to print them soon. #printmaking #prints #instagramartists #artplay #art

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Loads and loads of green tomatoes and peppers. Very excited. #growshit #garden #suburbskills

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Cleaned the block up a bit and I think the next print will look stellar. #printmaking #prints #instagramartists #artplay #art #reliefprinting #recycled

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Folx... don't do this. Ask your neighbor. Generally speaking everyone I know will let you pick your fill if you just ask. But if you don't ask you make an enemy of the neighbor and risk them calling the cops. Anyone who asks me can come pick pears, and sometimes peaches too. But if they don't ask I yell a lot and won't let them pick them.

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Sometimes ideas dont work quite right. The plan was to overlay a monoprint over the brain. Seems bubblegum pink is too opaque to let the brain shine through. Gonna flip it tomorrow. Made a stack of the pink monoprints and will print the brain over it tomorrow. We'll see how it prints. I attempted to mix the pink loose but the stuff is really holding shape. I might need to revamp my plan. Anyway. Snapped a pic of the brain plate. Super thin but great details. Good stuff. #printmaking #prints #instagramartists #artplay #art #monotype #monoprint #brains

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Quick and dirty relief cut. I found a material that is killer for intaglio and relief. Funny thing, my nice.woodcut.tools hate it but my cheapo lino tools slice through it like buttaaah. It's a recycled no 5 plastic that can't easily be recycled and I can get a butt load of. Awesome. This little brain was printed up with @speedball_art supergraphic black and man does it look great on this crisp cardstock. I also got out my speedball lino press since i managed to break a gear in my mini press. Anyway the lino press worked really well to print this up. I thought I'd have to carve then mount the thin plastic to get a decent print. Nope. These are getting combined with a monotype print that I think is gonna be killer. #printmaking #reliefprint #print #artplay #art #instagramartists

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Tested a dry point on soda can backed with packaging. The first pri t was great. I got 3 clear prints, the 4th is a bit fuzzy. I'm not sure if it is the wipe or the nature of the material. The aluminum wraps a lot. The pressure needs to be set juuuuuuuusssssstttt right to get a good imprint and not damage the delicate little plate. I made 2 new press beds for the press. They are 6x24 inches and just under 3/4 in thick. HD was out of the MDF I wanted so I bought 2 cheap shelves. Unfortunately they are made of particle board. Which is not as evenly dense. It does have a nice easy to clean plastic surface though. I managed to damage one already. The goal is to eventually build up the.mini press and leave the bed in it for more typical loading and use. I also made my self a graver. It was ridiculously easy and satisfying. I need to make another with more sloped shoulder so I can vary the line a bit. I might try some wood engraving. #printmaking #drypoint #prints #art #minipress #maker #artplay #instagramartists

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Really excited about the peppers setting fruit! Got some red shepherds, gochujang king, and an unknown fish cross and a true fish. The cross is deeply black and has the purple lined blossoms with the variegatedleaves of a fish pepper. Gorgeous. The variegated leaves of the fish pepper are quite spectacular. My super hots are all putting out blossoms too. My tomatoes are all 2 feet high! #garden #cityfarm #grow #suburbskills #growshit #hotpeppers #urbanoasis #citysteading

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Some awesome little tests from today. I made a bunch of tiny plates from chipboard. I coated each one with gloss or satin varnish then sanded one of each. One is a plastic coated advertising poster. The commercial poster, surprise, came out best of all. Of my varnish tests the gloss, unsanded printed the best of my tests. It's too bad because there were some cool images in the others. I have a limited supply of the ads, so I'll need to figure out what I'll use when they are gone. They also make great stencil material. I have a few good prints of the snake tongues skull that will becomes cards. Once dry they'll be on ko-fi. The car bake off of the other points? Half are dry while those with heavy inking are almost there. So I'll let those bake another day and tomorrow I'll see if they are dry. #printmaking #drypoint #prints #art #minipress #maker #artplay

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Whelp, we're gonna try the car bake dry of the @speedball_art super graphic black ink. I love the depth of darkness of this ink so I'm willing to try this. I MIGHT look into building some sort of small rack that I can easily transport from studio to car if this works well. I suspect it will so I'm thinking about the build... To be fair to my studio space and the ink, it has been cool un the studio and we had several days of rain. I have had a fan on the prints constantly. They have partially dried. Lighter areas are dry and the deep darks have gotten stiffer. So partial drying. I really just need to push the drying time so I can list them for sale and send out a few copies to subscribers. It's kinda cool looking at all these prints laid out like this.

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Messing around with etching. The plate was a mini white board with strips of magnetic stuff on the back. They had a very out of date calendar. Anyway the plastic coating is over cardstock. A lot of folks use aseptic packaging and this is the same idea. I etched into the blank side with a scoring needle and embossing tip. The tiny tip seems to work better for deep darks. The lines from the wide embossing tips are easy to over wipe. This was just a quick sketch and a test of the materials. #sketching #printmaking #prints #instagramartists #artplay #art

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Secret spots. The light is intense and the smell is balsam fir, spruce and earth. You know it if you know it.

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