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| Ochre Sea Stars, linocut by Ele Willoughby on 8" x 8" washi paper |
For the #PrinterSolstice prompt triadic colours, I choose the secondary colours orange, purple and green, which are three equidistant on the colour wheel. I was looking forward to #InsertAnInvert2024 and needing an intertidal creature.
My lino block print of two Pisaster ochraceus, generally known as the purple sea star, ochre sea star, or ochre starfish, on a bed of kelp, is hand-printed on 8" x 8" (20 cm x 20 cm) delicate white Japanese paper with bark inclusions. A common sea star, or starfish of the Pacific, it is a keystone species considered an indicator of health in the intertidal zone. Most of these starfish are purple but they can also come in orange (as shown), or ochre, yellow and brown.
These were amongst my favorite finds on the beaches of Vancouver Island.
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| A collection of small gel prints made with cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink, cut paper stencils, lino blocks and plant materials |
For the #PrinterSolstice prompt CMYK I spent a morning experimenting with my gel plate, using paper stencils, lino blocks and plant materials and my process cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks.
For the #PrinterSolstice prompt primary colours, I thought I would play with adding yellow and red to a cyanotype (which are in tones of blue of course). I decided to return to my idea of contrasting a fractal Sierpiński triangle and the naturally occurring fractal shape of a fern leaf. The Sierpiński triangle (also called the Sierpiński gasket or Sierpiński sieve) is a fractal equilateral triangle, subdivided recursively into smaller equilateral triangles. It's a self-similar sets—that is, it is a mathematically generated pattern that is reproducible at any magnification or reduction named after the Polish mathematician Wacław Sierpiński. This was a decorative pattern many centuries before Sierpiński. I made a cyanotype of a fern leaf and used a gel plate to add a red circle. I lino block printed the yellow Sierpiński triangle.
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| Fractal Geometry, cyanotype with gel print and linocut, 9" x11" by Ele Willoughby, 2024 |
And for the final prompt warm colours, I looked ahead once again to prompts for #InsertAnInvert2024 and decided I needed to make a true crab.
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| Frog crab, linocut print on washi paper, 8" x 8", by Ele Willoughby, 2024 |
My hand-printed red frog crab (Ranina ranina), also known as a spanner crab or Huỳnh Đế crab, is hand-printed on Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper 8" x 8" (20.3 cm x 20.3 cm) square. This crab is found in tropical and sub-tropical waters offshore Australia, the Philippines, Vietnam, the east coast of Africa, through the Indian ocean to the Pacific offshore Japan and Hawai'i. It is the sole known member of its genus and it is fished for its meat. The 5.9" (15 cm) crabs live in 10 to 100 m (33–328 ft) or water, where they bury themselves in the sand during the day and hunt bottom-dwelling fish. Known as "frog crabs", on account of their elongated carapace and frog-like appearance. Their claws are modified into tools for digging, and the body is a rounded shape that is easy to bury in sand. Unlike most other true crabs, the abdomens of raninids are not curled under the cephalothorax, so they are a little unusual looking.
Ranina ranina is a regional specialty in some regions of the Philippines where it is known as curacha. It is generally eaten steamed as halabos, or cooked in coconut milk as ginataan. In Vietnam the species is named as "Huỳnh Đế crab", literally means "emperor crab" as it has been a favorite high-ranked cuisine of historical Vietnamese monarchs hailed "monarch of all the crab".
