Florence Turnour's Blog

Today I went to the Fullerton Arboretum . It was about 30 minutes away, so I'm not likely to frequent it, but it was a very nice wooded area and garden. There is a historic house of some type there that I planned to draw, but I was so taken by the diverse collection of trees that I decided to go out into the wooded area instead. This drawing took a long time. I had to label the trees in the drawing to keep from getting confused about where the gaps were and where the trunks were. I put numbers on the frontmost trunks, and letters on the next layer back to try to keep them straight. I am taking a Craftsy  class on Travel Sketching, and in one of the lessons, Marc Taro Holmes paints without drawing a sketch by first painting the negative space. I thought to take this technique, but the tree was so complicated I decided to draw it as well. I first painted the gaps between the branches that I did draw. And then between the four frontmost trunks. And then I painting the f...

I made some new stencils to Gelli Print though. On this one, I drew on the print with black and white pen. I like the tree stencil, but I'm enjoying using the cut-out portion of it as a mask more. And last, here are some birds. I know many people use their Gelli Plate prints for collage, so this isn't revolutionary, but after printing with my stencils for a while, I notice that the masks look like they'd make great collage elements. Does anyone cut and then print on the little bits? Or does everyone print and then cut? I make my stencils from overhead projector slides. These are the masks Thanks for looking!

I did a web search for Ukranian Folk Art , and had great fun sketching from what I found there. Inspired by my sketches, and this post from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer , I carved some rubber stamps.  Then I went to town! Stamping is so satisfying. And then I put my elbow into the ink pad. Time for bed! Thanks for looking.