The Scrub Turkeys return

Its been a few years since I printed a Scrub Turkey series.  Its one of my favourite birds (after wrens!).  I recently sold the remaining Turkey prints from my last series, so I thought...why not?  Lets print some more!  Each series is different, and shows the advances in my technique and colour choices.

I've named this series of 13 prints "Bird vs Backyard" highlighting how the Scrub Turkeys' cross the boundaries between urban and natural areas.  Locals have a 'love/hate' relationship with them and keen gardeners are frustrated by the turkeys' instincts to collect mulch to create their nest mounds.  Its quite a backyard battle!

And a first for me, I took a short video as a printed - its at the bottom of this post.  I must admit it was a low-tech video using my phone and a selfie stick but I hope you enjoy it!

 

I always like to plan my compositions before I start printing -
laying out my stencils and objects to see how they work together.

I was gifted some awesome mesh which I used in my wren
prints last week.  Here are the marks left by the mesh on the plate
from a previous print, ready to print off onto the next print.

A happy accident - I was inking up a stencil on scrap paper
and it ''printed itself'....nice!  I'll find a use for it - right now it reminds me
of the magic of monoprinting and the serendipity of the process.

One that didn't quite work.  I changed my colours after this one.
I'll still use it for something, maybe cut it up.

The best print in the series (in my opinion).  Blue and brown are my
favourite colours, so I keep coming back to them.

I reverted back to my old technique a few times, overprinting
on ghost prints which provided more interesting marks and textures.

White space is always a good compositional tool,
but its tricky to get the balance right like I did here.