Leaves and Colour

After penciling in my potential installation area, I decided to look for some autumn landscape references to see whether I would like more Japanese or Chinese style of colours for this installation. Following Hannah’s advice, I decided to experiment and incorporate both types.

Hishida Shunso (1874-1911)

Xiang Shengmo (1597-1658)

Mixing various shades of reds, yellows and oranges.

Plate before applying colour.

Plate after carefully applying ink using toothbrush.

Turns out there was too much ink, so I decided to do a ghost print.

The ghost print turned out much better. However, the satin white somerset made the leaves much brighter than I wanted due to the contrast. I will need to get some off-white somerset for my final prints.

This leaf plate was not the best for collagraph as it was too delicate. While I was cleaning, I ended up taking off a lot of the leaves. It would be much more effective to use monoprint instead with the dry leaves.