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Pulling the print 2nd run 1st in series, originally uploaded by photographerpainterprintmaker.
Last spring I visited a friends home. If I lived at their home I would never need to go on vacation. Their yard is a tropical paradise in the north. One plant in particular caught my eye. The common name for this large leafed plant is Elephant Ear for obvious reasons. She had just thrown out one of the beautiful leaves, and I begged her to save me the next one she had to prune. So this last Friday she called me. I was ecstatic! By Sunday I was in the studio preparing and inking up this lovely leaf for printing. It almost was too big for my Arches oversize BFK paper. Not to mention it hardly fit the press bed. I used the shop camera to document printing this beautiful plant. I can hardly believe that I was able to put the leaf through the press 12 times!
Please go here to see the slide show on Flickr. If you open the original photo’s you will see an explanation of what I am doing.
Elizabeth Gaye MacDonald, Plein Air Artist 
Thank you so much for visiting my site again! I did indeed use watercolour in this process. I’ve been using watercolour in my mono prints lately. I use the gum arabic to help the watercolour to lift off the plate, or whatever surface I happen to be printing from. I this case I used it to help lift the paint from the leaf.
Last summer I supervised our intern at Windsor Printmaker’s Forum with her mono printing workshop. She taught my method at this workshop. You can read about that event here: http://wpfstudio.org/2011/08/20/summer-mono-printing-worshop/
I just finished looking at the fascinating slide show on ‘flickr’ detailing the process of making your Elephant Ear prints. It is a stunning result. Is it ink you were using? It looked like tubes of watercolour, with gum arabic as an ‘extender’ (that’s what I use it for when I paint).
Thank you for taking all those photos to make it an educational journey.
and thank you for commenting on my site.