Falling for new directions

I saw a post on the blog, The Crafts Dept. from Martha Stewart Living, that showed how they changed their blog header according to the seasons, so I decided to change mine to a more seasonally appropriate image.  I used double stick tape to hold some leaves in place, and printed my header wood block on them.  What do you think?

For the past few weeks since I've been going to figure drawing next door at my studio on Tuesday mornings. It's taken me a while to get warmed up again, and feeling somewhat happy with my sketches.  Today I tried my hand at figure drawing with monotype.  I inked up a piece of plexi-glass and sketched the model's hand into the ink with q-tips.  Later I remembered that I had blender stumps for charcoal drawing that worked much better to draw into the ink with.

After the figure drawing session, I soaked some paper, and printed the plates in the press.  This was the last sketch, and the most successful one for the day.  Not bad for a first try. It still feels a little awkward and stiff for me, the fingers should "dangle" a little more  gracefully. I'm still getting the hang of this new method working by pushing around the ink with blender stumps and q-tips. Practice makes perfect right?