Low light

 

I headed out for my morning walk in near darkness this morning as you can see from the photo above and below.

A I walked I made the decision to take photos of things in the dark or low light and see how the iPhone camera handled the light without any flash assistance. The following photos were all taken in darkness or low light.

Some of the colour of flowers etc simply popped - a joy in the low light. 

Photos of a few of G's orchids follow - these were taken on Sunday in the morning light.

It was a quiet and enjoyable walk.

A big effort

 

After just under 600 pressings of the lever on the Ardana press I produced 138 celebration coasters and 36 celebrate gift cards. But the final result of cards, such as in the opening photo, starts with cutting up heaps of coaster board-paper.

Setting the type.

Proofing the type and testing the set up.

Then it is on to just printing and printing as you can see from the following photos.

Of course as you can see from the last photo there are usually a couple of casualties - but even these look beautiful. 

Thanks to Fiona for doing the clean up of rollers and ink plate at the end. These coasters and gift cards will all be used at the end of the year. 

Picking up the pieces

 

I was back in the letterpress-printing studio today. My goal was to finish off a couple of artists' books that I had last worked on months ago. As you can see from the photo above: one was a small folded book of letter press printed daily words of inspiration; whereas the other, Univited Hands, is a more complex book about patriarchy. 

With the latter book I needed to ensure the pages are in correct order and add reinforcing  to the edges of the pages so that it can be safely and strongly stitched. Fortunately I kept the small rough mock up book to guide the the page sequence - see below.

The following photos are simply a couple of the work progress and work bench. The reinforcing edges wrap around the sheets and are glued in place with double sided tape.

The photo below shows the spine of the book ready for stitching.

And the front edge of the book - below.

The small Daily Words book had been under weights to ensure it kept its fold. The book is meant to be carried in one's pocket or bag so it needed a bit of twine, courtesy of Fiona, to hold it folded.

I can't do single page binding so I will need to pay someone to bind Univited Hands and two artist's proofs of my other patriarchy book It Won't Dismantle Itself. 

Random phone fragments

 

The mornings are still dark as you can see from the photo of Fiona heading off to her exercise group; and the photos below of the street light and moon from my walk this morning.

I did mention that this blog is in the main made up of random photos that were on the phone including the Platypus seen at the weir; and gorgeous wallaby with joey in pouch biting us this morning.

I was not taking many photos this morning as I was doing a gentle longer walk as I was looking after a wounded ear - small operation yesterday.

Preparations for sculptural post and cubes

 

Fiona and I have agreed that we should use up the materials we have around before buying more art materials. I decided to get into my wood pile and cut up some of what was there to make a couple of posts and as many cubes as the timber allowed. 

As you can see from the opening photo I have prepared a good post and 7 cubes for turning into yard art. Process photos follow - timber hauled to the cutting area; and the cut pieces. The post is about 1.5m tall and the cubes are 17-18cm.

After giving all the cut timber a sand with coarse sandpaper in the belt sander, I selected the post and the 7 cubes to rout before Fiona and I add rust to them. 

Routing process photos follow - cubes marked up and post routed.

The next stage is to ink up the routed grooves - I got time top ink the post's routed lines.

Talking of using up materials - I decided to treat the remaining square washers and some screws with acid to encourage them to rust.

The preparations is close to being finished - Fiona and I will make time to add rust to the post and cubes.