How to grow Greetings Cards from Seed…

Ok, so I lied a little bit in the title, the seeds are in fact runner bean seeds, but there are seeds in there and they are indeed planted inside greetings cards: And here is how I come to be planting runner beans inside my greetings cards: It can be hard to sell original artwork because the cost of the final item can be prohibitive to some who’d like to be customers. I find this especially so because my pictures are very detailed and I am so very slow and fussy… And it is so very easy to get artwork…

More mezzotint masqueraders

…sorry for the alliteration, but the title describes just what I’ve been up to: continuing the making of some very small mezzotint prints. All the mezzotint plates and prints I have so far shown you measure 5×6 cm, or 2 x 2 1/4 inches. Small, and therefore fairly quick to make, though the whole process is still undoubtedly hard work on the hands! And so I am getting used to this technique before I embark on something more ambitious… and gather together some pennies to afford a large ‘pre-rocked’ copper plate – which costs many times more than the plain…

A First Attempt at Mezzotint: part 3

continued from previous post: https://nancyfarmer.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/a-first-attempt-at-mezzotint-part-2/ …and finally! After more burnishing the plate of Medusa makes an image like this: (click on the image and you can see a lot more detail) …at least, it does when I get it right. As I mentioned before not only the making of the plate can be tricky, the inking-up is a disaster-prone process too. Too much ink wiped off and this happens: …which is really annoying. Especially as it takes a while to do each time, and the plate is wearing out a little bit each time, too. I may be finding there…

A first attempt at mezzotint…

A brand new blog and a brand new process all at once! So, I have my website (http://www.nancyfarmer.net) for the finished stuff, and Facebook for flippant one-liners, but where to put something more substantial? Ah ha, a blog, I thought… Well, I shall give it a try, we will see if it lasts. Coincidentally, the picture above is a brand new technique for me. I have been making etching prints for some time (http://www.nancyfarmer.net/gal_etchings.html), and have begun to borrow techniques from mezzotint, so I thought I’d try it properly. So, what is a Mezzotint? It’s a form of engraving where…