Ellyn Weiss
Ellyn Weiss is an artist who creates a variety of artworks in various styles. However we are looking at her specifically for her print work and how she works back into her pieces using mixed media. There is no personal and background information available about Weiss, which has left me to assume how she creates her pieces.
Looking at her work, Weiss is inspired by colourful parts of her surroundings for example flowers. She initially starts off doing mono prints, water and inked backgrounds or paintings, and then works back into them using a variety of media such as sewing, collage, inks and paint. The range of colours in each of her pieces are every vibrant and contrasting with each other.
Weiss sometimes makes marks using the cross hatching and stippling techniques. Otherwise she will usually work with outlining certain shapes within each piece. She uses a lot of geometric shapes which are adapted to her own style. I like Weiss’s work because of the vast amount of colours she uses throughout her pieces.
April Richardson
Along with Ellyn Weiss, there is little information available about April Richardson. It seems as though Richardson is inspired by natural and organic forms found in the environment. She uses a variety of vibrant and and dull colours in most of her pieces which offers up some contrast in every image. The colours she uses also alter between cold and warm blends. usually the cold colours are blues and fading greens, and the warm colours are sunset oranges and yellows.
Generally Richardson will create a mono print onto a coloured background to start with, then she will start to apply layers to build the image. The layers can vary between different mono prints, collage or drawing/paintings. She made a statement on her website that states she will ‘apply thin layers of ink and paper, scrape or tear it away, and then rebuild layer after layer to achieve complex depth and texture. Sometimes presses leaves or flowers directly into the surface’.
I really like April Richardsons work because of how she layers her designs and I wish to work more using layers to build up a piece.
Lotti Ducksbury 