Coral–Clearly–Maple

This is my leaf series. For this project I had to make multiple pieces of art that had leaves involved as the main focus. I started out by collecting leaves from outside. Because it is fall, there are many beautifully colored leaves all around. Their shapes and colors were the inspiration for these projects. The first set of images is gelatin prints, and the second supposed to be realistic. The gelatin prints are done by putting ink on a piece of gelatin, placing leaves/objects on top, and putting paper on top. This creates three prints, negative, positive, and ghost. I extended my gelatin prints, meaning. I added pattern and design to them, within and in the background.

My first gelatin print was a negative space print. I thought one of the figures looked like a tropical fish. I drew the outline of this fish in pencil–some of the lines went into the ink. I used pen to create the stripes using hatch marks. I used pen in a similar way to give movement to the tail. I used watercolor for the fins so that they stood out from the blue. In the space left from the ferns, I made different kinds of corals. I started with watercolor to create bright colors. I went over this in pen to give a cool and coral like pattern. I used the left over watercolor and flicked it onto the bottom of the page.

The second gelatin print is also a negative print. I made this one by applying rainbow colors to the gelatin before placing the leaves down. I took the leaves off after I made the print, and reapplied them over the print. there was already so much color, I thought I would just go in with black pen to add some pattern. I added different patterns to each leaf. After this, I went in the background, which had some colored leaves, and added outlines of the ferns with a black pen.

The last project started with a visual reference. I had a black box that taped leaves to. I sketched out the shape onto a piece of paper. I wanted to use watercolor. I used different colors for each leaf to match the coordinating leaf in the box. After this dried, I added in with pen the veins of the leaf. I also added some holes and other markings. I traced all the leaves with black pen to make them stand out. since the background was white, I added some watered down ink to it to make the leaves contrast some.