Transparency's the word of the day

While I was at the plein air session yesterday, I got a lot of thinking in, including some design ideas.  And today I realized that I could print out the pix of the wildflowers and of the lichen on the tree, onto fine silk, to create a transparent image.

You can get this silk, mounted on paper, to run through your inkjet printer, from Dharma Trading, my go-to place, and I had a couple of six packs of assorted silks.  So I used the very finest ones, for maximum see through.  Silk charmeuse, chiffon, crepe de chine and organza.
 
After I did the two natural images I realized this could also be applied to other artwork, so I did a couple of the daylily paper works the same way.  They may end up being framed on top of the original paper, don't know yet.  But it was fun doing this.  Talk about one extreme to the other!  handmade paper from natural fibers, to comparatively high tech printing.

 Here are all four sheets taped to the window, to show you the degree of transparency.

And here are, upper, the lichen image, and lower, the wildflower image.  As you see, in my attempt to show you the transparency, I've created a new image of them plus their background.  I love this confused and dreamy effect.

This is still raw material, the ultimate destination not yet decided.  But in the course of doing this, I realized that the double images  can be printed out in their turn. And then the transformation continues.  Just shows why it's a good idea to do plein air once in a while.  Being out of doors really gets your ideas moving. And why it's good to let the ideas lead the way.

 This is great fun, and you can easily do it, if you get the paper- -mounted silk, which comes in 8x11 usual printing paper size, and remember to insert it the right way up in the printer...