Sketchbook Project's print exchange 2015.

Every year I try to participate in the Sketchbook Projects Print exchange- sometimes I get real gems back, and it's a nice little reminder that I went to college to get a minor in Printmaking because Oh Yeah I love this stuff.

This years theme is "Greetings From a Distant Land"

The hope is that you'll end up with prints from Europe and Africa and far away places, the reality is a lot of mine have come from the East coast US- although I did get some cool ones the first year from places like San Francisco and Seattle. I have one from Kansas too.

Last year the theme was Just a Second and I think I had missed posting it up here, but I did a child to adult type theme- as in "it just takes a second to grow up" Maybe the same girl, maybe sisters, something like that.

I started with a drawing and then made it into a photoshop file so I could move stuff around. Of course this was too complex, and had to be simplified for the actual print since they are only allowed to be 5x7. My ambitions got to big for my time constraints.

Then I just carved it up and ran 13 of them off  to go out to the world. Ran off isnt the right term because I ended up printing them by hand, so really I painstakingly rubbed each one with a spoon until I thought my arm would fall off. Now I have a baron so hopefully this year it'll go smoother. 

 The finished product I did a little tweaking to to get it to fit right on the block, simplified some stuff and printed it on a cream colored paper with a dark grey ink that had a little shimmer to it. Because sparkles. Some parts came out a little janky because of clumsy tool handling.


This year I'm not sure if I should do like some fun fantasy world or if I should just do a little relief portrait of my home town somewhere, thinking that to whoever gets it it will be from a far away land.

adventures in photoshop

Going back to the post where it was incredible that I used photoshop to put a watermark over some images, I am pretty proud of myself I just drew a drawing in photoshop all by myselfff. yes it utilizes one layer and only two tools (pen, eraser) AND YES I drew it from a picture. But I've never not just traced something so I'm pretty psyched and a lot less scared of photoshop than I was. It's my awesome neice- Breck Girl #1.

The shadings a lot rough or downright wrong/missing in a lot of areas but rather than kill myself over it I just stopped drawing when I got tired of the image, called it a sketch. squee I did it and it wasn't that hard.  

Evolution of the print

So I talked a little about the evolution of this print in my previous post- the benefits and limitations of materials etc. I wanted to do a post that was basically a concept to physicality one- showing what I planned and then showing how it came out. I wanted to show the layers of colors digitally and then how different the print stacked up.

First the digital print I made up.
The physical block print was a tiny jigsaw with  the image measuring 4" by 5" (plus a bit) in real life. Digitally I made the mistake of making the image size bigger (roughly 10"x12") then zooming out allowing for a crisp clear image.

The print was a jigsaw print which allows each layer to have two colors printed at once. This is the first layer digitally that was planned. Each layer was transparent (hoping it would reflect the transparency of the ink) so that the colors would gradually build on each other creating unique colors by overlapping. I had some great experiences with this technique from past prints.

Layer one: green bottom, blue top (the lines would be the final block but in the digital images are present on each layer)

Then layer two grey on top, orange on bottom:

Layer three has red added to the bottom. This is where digitally it started to feel like I was building a reduction block print- bearing in mind everything that stays the old color would be carved out.

The fourth layer I had as "navy" but it was supposed to be a tinted purple on both blocks top and bottom resulting in a navy-esque optical mix on top and a red violet optical mix on the bottom.

Of course the FINAL final layer would have been the black lines and the solid black middle of the car window. In the digital images you get a better sense of the motifs in the print- The theme was "The Drive Home" and I racked my brain until coming up with this idea- I knew I wanted something looking out the window and the original thought for this came from remembering, as a child, looking out the window and seeing dragons in the sky ( I loved dragons). 

The car window sticks out as a car window and the book frame shape looks like a book; if you pause and step back from the ACTUAL real life print it looks like a book but you have to step back- it's not as immediately *bam* hit you over the head with it as I wanted. I wanted it to look more like you were looking on the pages of a book with the car window being reality and imagination swirling all around it (a little cheesy but that was my aim).

Above is the full shot of what this tiny print looked like. For size reference because there's nothing really to gauge by- It's sitting on a whitman's sampler box, the paper size is 5"x7" and the vertical height of the image is 4". You can see I struggled with getting the opulent jewel toned background colors I wanted- those come from the ink transparency. My colors ended up being really thick and opaque. I had to stop a layer early because each layer on the block was getting really gummy as the ink slightly dried before I could get a full run off. 

The problem with the ink lead to a conflict with the digital plan where I put the navy layer and the red layer in the same run to prevent myself from having to print it 50 times ( I made 25 prints knowing I could lose a lot of them along the various layers). With the two colors in the same run and skipping the purple layer I could only run the block once (25 times). Printing by hand was a slow experience, and after the base layer I knew I had to do anything in my power to shorten the amount of times I had to run them through. To get the print totally done I did layer 1 (blue/green), layer two (grey/orange), layer three (navy/red) and layer 4 ( black lines and solid center block) which means I printed each of the 25 prints 4 times- that's essentially 100 prints. They were small but I still found it immensely challenging to focus that long on being careful with the delicate paper and such. 

Above a close up of the dragon; you can see the idea/design was the same, but the execution was bulky and the ink didn't adhere to the paper in a nice even manner- of the 25 prints, three or so of them I went right through the paper trying to get the ink to stick. Other times I loaded it up with too much ink and the ink pulled up the previous layer of color or splurted off the sides of the lines making them sloppy. The layers were patchy on a lot of them.

This is another shot of the full print- there are some problem areas but overall it turned out better than I thought it would. Half way through I was definitely saying "I don't know about this..." As you can see in this one the orange really didn't take to the kiwi birds, so I have a pair of pretty green kiwi birds where they should have been an oranger color. After the second layer turning out hit or miss on all 25 prints, I sort of let go a bit and just powered through. Some turned out well, and others were really missing large pieces. I really am attached to the design though and I think it could be so fantastic if done larger with more texture and an actual press with better materials. So I log that one for a future project. 

I also got my prints in the mail today from the print exchange- I was ready to be disappointed after all the trouble I had with my print I imagined other people would have had similar failures- but I was pleasantly surprised. I got three that I didn't care for because they were either technically not good (for irksome composition reasons mostly) or they were "so easy a caveman could do it". I got a really nice little etching, a tiny litho print and even a neat mixed media print that has reduction print mixed with screen printing. I like most of them and even Steve was excited to look at them up close. I love owning other people's prints because when it belongs to you, you aren't ashamed to touch it and run your hands over the ink bumps and really check it out in a different way than you would in front of the artist because you're worried about offending them. 

Mostly I was impressed and I enjoyed the different takes on the theme and the skill with which the images were done. I could really tell who put their time in and who just BS'ed it at the last minute. There was only one or two where I could not tell what media they were made with (either screen print or maybe a solar plate?) something about them almost looked like a digital print and I feel that if they ARE that's shitty and cheating. 

The End for now. Maybe I'll post the prints I got in  the next post- but I want to make sure I watermark em and credit the right artists for them because while I own the physical prints I don't feel like they are "my" images. 

I finished it 15 days ago.

I finished it 15 days ago and didn't put it up. I finished it, I postmarked it on the very last day! I barely made it and I did it in one weekend. I had to skip a color. My inks were terrible and they flaked and got sticky and made splotchy lines! BUT BUT I did it. I made an art guys!


I made an art and I'm so excited. After being art barren for two years since I left college and art was my life I haven't filled a sketch book, picked up a brush or anything. My teachers would be so disappointed in me so I made sure to disappear off the face of the earth. I graduated summa cum laude from an art school and promptly stopped making art. Maybe it was a detox period.

It did sort of turn out like an "Expectation: Reality" meme. I had a great digital image for which I USED ****ING PHOTOSHOP. How's that for moving up huh? You know the meme where it has the cookie monster cupcake done perfectly and then someone's horrible melted version next to it.

The original design was so awesome- until I had to do it REALLY TINY and didn't have the right equipment. Plus the ink drama posted above. I was tired. Also I procrastinated until I ran out of time. The one good thing I had going was my incredible awesome paper. I'll do a followup with the print and the image it was based off of in the next week. 

For a tiny 4 inch jigsaw print it was ok though, and I'm still proud of it. I feel like I want to do other ones since I still have the template to print them on, but with a simpler knot design or something. The jigsaw print is one of my favorite things to work with. In due time I will redo this print larger. 

Project Last Minute!

A few months ago I joined a thing run by the sketchbook project people called a print exchange. Basically you make a print and send it in and they send you back a mixed and matched variety from other people around. The only thing I wish they did was have a map with pins so each time someone signed up they got a pin and every one can see where the influence is going. and be excited about getting prints from someone in California or Germany or something.

So I came up with an idea, mocked it up in photoshop and everything based on the theme and what kind of print I wanted to do etc. Then did nothing for about two months and NOW it is due to be postmarked ...in two weeks? So I finally transferred the image and jigsawed the block, made the rig for printing it and set up my pins and tabs. Here's hoping it turns out. It's so tiny I can't imagine it'll take very long to carve out but you never know. Printmaking without a studio can be laborious and can take flipping forever. I'll keep updating as I work on it and possibly with pictures.

Watching Steve Paint.

Watching Steve paint this week is making me hungry for the metallic taste of biting my nails with cad red under them (Don't do this it's very bad for you). I think I'm going to begin painting again. It takes up less room than printmaking anyway for now and I can't seem to get my shit together enough to make any prints. I did just buy a bunch of paper though to have on hand when I spontaneously decide to go for it.

Here's some blogs I've found and websites I've looked at recently.
I'm going to start back with the "Zorn" palette because in Cameron Bennett's class that's the one I enjoyed using the most- I used the others but I didn't really have fun using them like I did with the Zorn palette so I'm gonna bust out the ochre and move on with my life. It's about time I stopped quipping Cameron-isms at Steve and actually used them for a change.

Firstly I started looking up what the Zorn palette was becauseI had a brain fart and I was going "what's the palette we used with the four colors? It had like...red black white and another color. sepia? no. umber? no." So I googled "limited palette portrait 1860's" (why the 1860's? because my brain is amazing) and up pops Zorn, famous for his limited palette, born ~1860. VOILA - proof that it's all up there if only you can access it.

SO then I remember that Cara painted in this really austere beautiful aqua and yellow and cream palette that I FELL IN LOVE WITH. Cara- seriously. senior year work= lovely. Thanks  for giving me some of your naples yellow light off your palette- that dreamy hardboiled egg yoke color. Sadly, no one here seems to sell it. She started if I remember correctly by looking at Kanevsky who, as it turns out, has a really large and complicated palette with similar airy lovely results. I love the colors.
Also at the link, George Nick who is a great painter.

They are sort of like the pastel Thiebaud cakes I also am in love with.    I feel like everyone at art school has a brief torrid affair with Wayne Thiebaud and Jenny Saville etc. The love never goes away but you keep moving up and finding other artists to drool over.

I also found Lorraine Shirkus, who is really good with what looks like a palette knife- nice loose marks, and a great color scheme. These plums are really beautiful.

The links on her blog lead me to this great painter, Qiang-Huang who does an AMAZING painting a day and mas a really lovely workup quickly. He has a really great time lapse Demo I watched and loved because it confirmed everything I ever learned about painting- start with a big brush, block in your values, find your strong highlights and your strong darks, work vague to specific. the paintings are beautiful- seeing how he makes them is encouraging. Also looking at the ones that are sold and the ones that aren't sold, it also confirms my suspicion, you put a little orange in a painting and it'll sell. Bitches love orange. I've always thought it made a lot of sense to see what colors were trending that year in interior design and work with those. You would have an ever changing palette dictated by the people who are decorating their spaces and buying things to go in them. If you were that kind of person.

So you want to be a printmaker...

It has come to my attention that in order to be considered a printmaker you actually have to make distribute/sell or present prints. and the time to do that for me is...hope fully upcoming. why am I not entering the hundreds of prints I have in shows or contests? Because I'm a busy lady but I get the point. There's just something about the newness of work that's lovely. The old work I keep forgetting, isn't old to everybody, just me.

So perhaps I will enter some prints in some shows.

In the meantime- I'm making an inking table. Its turquoise. Also cutting new stencils based on my favorite print in the post beliw. Can't get over it. Gotta keep using the imagery.