A connecting element

I have been hoping to find an element I can use to bring all of this together. 

These winter mornings, there is often a couple of crimson rosellas in the garden when I come out, flashing ultramarine blue and vivid red as they move about. They also populate the forests that sit at the top of the

cliff site I am working with, just down the road. They start to fly into the project.

I make some mono prints using ocean colours: roll ups sprinkled with roto-wash to deteriorate the ink. Next session I layer a transparent wave plate in white, over two prints to connect them, then add a transparent shadow of a bird.  Next time I will learn to wipe the edges to reduce bleed spots! But overall, I think I like the effect. And the white wave was very subtle. But there is potential for something here.

And then, I went crazy with bird plates.  I was lying in bed awake at 5am, the best time to solve artistic problems, wondering how to bring this whole project together. When BOOM, I got a flash of a circular format with lots of birds flying around it. Finally, I can get into the scale and repetition idea, with lots of variations.

I went on to make four more bird plates of different sizes using some simple shapes for some plates, and also photocopies onto screen board, cutting them out and adding lines, peeling sections away for darker tones.  

I then had a couple of great sessions putting it all together onto a large sheet of japanese paper. I had to work out a system to spray, blot, place, print, and had some challenges with sudden creases.  These eased out by adjusting to spraying the whole sheet each time. I stumbled over a 3D effect when overprinting one of the plates in another colour (feels more like a screen print).

This was so much fun!  Some of my little plates didn't make the distance and got some creases or started falling apart.  My test prints became chin colle that I attached to the earlier rock prints.  Finally!  It has come together.

Bird Clock