Final Outcome!

I am really pleased with it :)

There are also 3 illustrated books at the bottom, to represent the leaves. For the exhibition I might have some loose leaves on the floor too.

Tree trunk....?

I am still pretty unsure of where I am going to go with my tree trunk. I did a load of experimentations a while ago using masking tape and fineliner but I think it came out a little flat.

UPDATE: I experimented further by using some masking tape and brown paper tape with the fineliner to give better definition. That seems to have done the trick.

Installing my piece

I have been installing my piece this week!

After some media experiments to work out what to do for the trunk, I decided to use masking tape, fineliner and brown paper tape directly on the wall. I then went in and added the leaves on top of it.

Update on my leaves

I found there was something missing from my leaves and I wasn't sure what, so I tried adding some shading to them to give them more of a 'leafy' texture, and I think that was what was missing! That's great in terms of making them look more complete, however I now have 800 leaves to shade!

Oh well, it will be worth it in the end!

UPDATE: I have decided to only shade a few of them, to add natural variation. Not so many to do now, maybe 200.

More Mono Prints!

Using a single colour for my mono prints was getting a bit boring so I decided to give the leaves a bit of variation using other leaf colours. I did this by getting a tube of burnt umber and a yellow ochre tube of printing ink.

This helped to vary the colour by adding a bit of each gradually.

Much better!

Update on my leaves

I found there was something missing from my leaves and I wasn't sure what, so I tried adding some shading to them to give them more of a 'leafy' texture, and I think that was what was missing! That's great in terms of making them look more complete, however I now have 800 leaves to shade!

Oh well, it will be worth it in the end!

Leaf Mono Prints

For the past couple of days I have been doing mono prints of leaves.

I used the original leaves from the memorial tree, rolling some safewash dark green ink on a sheet of glass. I mixed this colour myself using 1 part blue to 6 parts yellow.

After rolling the ink thinly onto the glass, I ensured that the ink was spread evenly by rolling over it repeatedly. I then used the roller to ink up the original leaf. Then I prepared the paper and 'sandwiched' the leaf. I then stepped on it to create the print.

Quite a long process but the result is lovely :)