Drawing challenge: Rhythm

Hi everybody,I'm so glad you could all come join, (or just pop in to see), this first drawing challenge of 2016We're all trying to find our rhythm.For me personally, it's not altogether that easy, and, spoiler alert, I haven't finished my piece of art as of right now, (Friday lunch time), so technically this will be part one! Although I will just come back here and edit later...but then I did set my heart on a totally new to me art form: making and printing a collagraph.Lats year in Art in Action I saw an artist do a small demonstration, and have wanted to try since then. Her name is Sue Brown and she prints the most amazing birds with her collagraph plates. So I set about to try to learn a little bit more, (I should have paid more attention at Art in Action!), and it seems that I needed a piece of art hard board to carve into.Armed with my hard board, a pencil and my sketch book, I got to spend 3 hours with C on Thursday evening, in the art school she works in, with no one around.What I envisioned for rhythm, is a small wild creature just picking itself up from the winter, ready to find its rhythm back in the world. This small creature turned out to be a wild hare, and the place it is picking itself up from turned out to be winter grasses.So I played with some grasses and weeds which I sketched on transparent sheets and moved around the composition, and when I was happy with it, I transferred the images and began to cut out the top layer of paper from the hard board.Guys, please remember that it's a bit of the blind leading the blind here with very little idea of what I'm doing. :DSo I worked quite late into the evening, and this morning...I had most of the rough cutting done and the plate was basically ready for fine work.So, as usual, I will tell you the great and not so great things I found out about doing this. The paper lifts off in layers, but the lifts aren't clean and leave fluffy, pilly, rags behind...and you're all probably shaking your head saying, "duh!"...but my thoughts are, will these pilly bits make a weird texture on the print? So we will take a deep breath and say what Robbie says, "Time will tell." :DWell here we are. In the strong morning sunshine, you can see the marked difference on my plate between the cut away part and the smooth original surface of the paper.One last thing to do before I'm off to my yoga class, is coat this plate with gloss medium. In my research I found out that it's imperative to use gloss medium to seal the paper and keep the ink on the surface.OK, I'm off to let this dry and work on it some more later this aft. Wish me luck. :DIn the meantime, please link in and let us see your rhythm. I'm so looking forward to new and fresh inspiration.[inlinkz_linkup id=599339 mode=1]