17 Owls

Lately, I've been printing by drawing on foam. I'm not sure where I got the foam. I'm not even sure of its original use. It's about 6" x 9" in size and is self-adhesive (a feature not pertinent to this process...).

The process is pretty easy. Take a ball-point pen and press hard enough to make a noticeable indent in the foam. If you're too dainty, the image won't print well.

The hardest part is actually having a design in mind. In this case, I got my design idea from a pillow featured in a Pier 1 Imports ad. As you can see, my owl is lop-sided. When I want a precise image, I will often use tracing paper or deli paper to trace an image. If you use pencil and then turn the deli paper over and go over the image again in pencil....you get a faint image transferred over on the foam. Then, of course, you need to use your ball-point pen to go over the faint image, so there's major indent in the foam.

This process also works well for abstract mark making. 

I've even used the process to make faces based on photos.

 This is my favorite of the prints, largely because of the dramatic coloring. I also began to create contrast in the prints by cutting out owl parts and adhering them to different bodies. The owl print here is red, yet the eyes, wings, tail and midsection come from a blue owl print. I also went over different areas with contrasting pens (red pen on the blue parts and blue pen over the red parts).

 I haven't done any pen work on the remaining owl prints, but you can see I cobbled them together from different Gelli print "pulls"

 I also cut some prints down to 5 x 7 size and mounted them to cards.

 This made a set of 10. I like how each owl has its own mood and personality.

I also think it's pretty great that, by using 2 Speedball ink colors, I ended up with over a dozen different colors that range anywhere from crimson to a delicate pink and all sorts of shades in-between.