Studio practice plants

Started the day arranging the plant clippings I’d taken from Newstead. I picked the more dry dead plants -- I like how it looked like an explosion of foliage with all the spindly twigs flying out. 

Then I did a couple quick drawing of the arrangements - didn't want them to be realistic or detailed just to capture a sense, quick mark making with graphite, looking at the plant textures. I then went over in gauche - I like the color pallet the autumnal tones- I found some acetate that someone had printed on, I couldn't tell what the image was originally but they stitched onto it - anyway it just looked good when I laid it over my drawing, the colours blended well together and how it masked parts of the drawing.

In the afternoon we had a workshop in the print room, we were embossing the Newstead plants. I picked out the more interesting plants and played around with different compositions similar to the earlier arrangements- making sure to balance it out. I made them look more like a bouquet.  This example was done with damp water colour paper- you can see where the head of the plant pierced the paper and it stuck to the newsprint 

I do like the embossings but there's something much nicer about the pressed plants on their own - you keep the colours and crispy textures. Also really glad that I picked the more dead seedhead plants - they're more sculptural