Task 43: Create a painting using potato printing

This may seem a slightly odd choice but when I was getting a bit stuck for ideas, my friend Pauline suggested I think about whatever I'd really enjoyed doing years ago, and see whether I could create a new challenge incorporating it. Instantly I said "potato printing". I'd loved it the one time we'd had a go at school using newspaper and saucers of powdered paint, when I was about six, and had never tried it since. When we came to live in Ham over 20 years ago, I went round to the little local library and noticed that one of the events coming up was potato printing - wonderful! It was being run by the Hamster group, so I asked if I could join. The librarian looked a little puzzled and asked if I had any children. It seemed rather a personal question but I said no and looked at her eagerly, waiting for my joining instructions. She explained that the maximum age was 12.

Anyway, now was my opportunity and as I like painting, I decided to combine the two and set myself the task of producing a painting based on potato printing. As I couldn't remember how to do it, I did a lot of googling and found that all the advice was for young primary school children. Very irresponsible, I thought, letting them loose with knives (hopefully not their own) - even with the instruction to ask teacher to help you. The exception was a women's project in Africa, where they make really striking fabrics using sweet potato prints and sell them to generate income for their families.

I set to with a combination of large and small potatoes, pastry cutters and a sharp knife. The cutters included a couple shaped like a star and a chicken, which seemed worth a try, and I used the knife to start carving out veined leaves:

I was quite pleased with the leaves, mainly because I'd managed to preserve the margins and resist the temptation to make all the veins identical, but my chickens didn't resemble anything living. The star was a possibility, but it seemed rather unimaginative. With autumn approaching, I thought it would be best to focus on the leaves alone and use seasonal colours - burnt sienna, raw sienna, cadmium yellow and olive green. To provide plenty of body, I used acrylic paints, blending them thickly into the potato surfaces, and heavy duty watercolour paper.

My hope was that a sheet of printed leaves might be sufficient, when framed, to fulfil the challenge. It was clear, though, that it wouldn't as there was no focal point - just foliage. Maybe I needed to change tack and go for something much more unusual, using tiny coloured glass beads either glued (crushed or whole) onto a canvas or stitched on through and around the paper leaves, with swirls to suggest movement and autumn winds. In my mind I could see it. The fact that I'd never tried anything like it before was exciting. It was also completely naff, so I reluctantly put away my pristine glue gun and stared at the blank canvas.

If the lack of a focal point was a problem, perhaps it would be better to scale down and go for a simple row of leaves, set against a vibrant watercolour background. This - with luck - would suggest autumn as a theme without having to create a specific image. So, next step was to paint the background:

Then I had to choose a few leaves out of the thirty or so I'd made, and try them out in different positions to see what worked best:

Finally there was the gluing, mounting and framing, using supplies from my existing stock:

To be honest it doesn't look great - rather like a child's effort which a proud parent has framed, where the background is the best part - but maybe in the right setting it would look a little more accomplished. The surplus leaves work quite well as gift tags, with green raffia, so they won't go to waste. As for potato printing, I think I've now got it out of my system - though I am tempted to have a go with it on plain heavy cotton, to create tea towels or possibly a tote bag. Just not any time soon....