Alright, We'll Take A Break From The Main Deer Girl Stuff For A Second And Talk Process.

alright, we'll take a break from the main deer girl stuff for a second and talk process.

both of these were made for the same project in relief printmaking, a class which I had not taken before, despite my obvious enjoyment of the process, heck, I bet not having the joy beaten out of me early on is what allowed me to like relief in the first place.

but more on the waking nightmare that was this class later.

the smaller cruder image was obviously made first, I thought I could get away with making an image out of three long thirds cut out of one large block. (spoiler alert: I could not) I used CMY colors to allow blending and then forgot to put any actual care into the image itself. this is because I wanted to experiment a little with multi-color processes before committing myself to something fancy that I was terrified I would have to hang in my show.

the larger and proper CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and Key means black because it locks the other three together) image was also a hellscape, but in different ways. I had trouble getting the four 1/2 blocks to align because when I transferred the image from the key block to the others it became mis-aligned. and because I did not realize this would be such a problem I didn't make enough prints to account for the mistakes and the misalignments.

man I'm getting stress flashbacks just sitting here typing about that class. hurrgurblurgh.

anyways, that christmas I gave my back-home friend carte blanche on picking out a print or two as christmas presents and Alex and Sara picked one of my messed up prints of this image which they now hang framed proudly in the entrance to their home. I have begged them to at least hang it (and the physical evidence of the shame and failure that it embodies)  in the bathroom but to no avail. they like the messed up bits the best.

so, in my life I am both the eldest sister of two, and one of two hulkingly larger step sisters. there is no good fairytale about a person in my situation in life. eldest daughters either don't do shit, fail and are cursed, or die horribly.

this is because with large families the youngest is an ever shifting downward slope of kids who get less and less parental attention. they need to feel they have a chance at one-upping somebody in life because what else have they got?

anyways, I've also got kind of a mouth on me, I swear and I say the thing that everybody is thinking but nobody else is going to say because it would be rude or awkward. but if stuff like that is kept inside it helps absolutely nobody, so I'm all about living above board and straightforwardly, and while I don't lie, I can't keep a secret either.

it just all comes out at once.

this was made as a solarplate intaglio image, that means the original image was drawn in pencil on a piece of semi transparent drafting film (allowing me one again to utilize a photograph and trace it out) this film was then applied and used to expose the solarplate through a UV light. the solarplate then washed out and was printed the same as a normal intaglio. I did not know at the time that with this process I did not have to crosshatch. oh well.

I made enough of these to give one to each member of the Pigeon Vision Collective (here depicted baked into a cozy pigeon pie) and still keep one for myself.

so these are from my "Fish Phase" it's a red rockfish and a sculpin done in hardground, softground and auqatint. the thing I like the most about this is the sculpin's little spot scales, the whole thing was an experiment and it evolved over the course of the class.

I made this, and then I saw some works by Thomas Wood and I felt very in awe and quite  inadequate, but heck, he's been at it longer than I have, so it's ok.

"she hung, caught by the vines"

so, this is somewhere around the moment where Deergirl looses her antler, it's a bit of a getting chased into the briar patch moment, I wanted to imply she basically jumped into this to escape her pursuers and the tangles of the vines are both entrapping and slowing her fall.

all climbing vines I have always viewed as vaguely predatory, blackberry vines, grape vines, wysteria, kudzu, morning glory, climbing roses, ivy, and any plant that climbs and strangles.

I want to show a lot of moral ambiguity though, the vines could hold onto her and use her rotting body as plant food after she eventually dies, but they dump her on the ground instead. likewise the wolves could decide to eat her at any point, but they need somebody with hands for particular tasks.

I hate titles, but with out the title this image is pretty opaque to most people as to what the heck I'm getting at. I take full responsibility for that failing even as I consider this piece a success. like many of my works the image itself addresses valid ideas I had received in critique, they were to the effect that: there needed to be a greater depth of field in my works, that my compositions and my images needed greater complexity and that occasionally putting more emphasis on the environment over the characters would bring a greater variance in my show as a whole and thus keep tings from getting monotonous.

"They Objected On Principle To Savages Of All Kinds"

this of course refers to the grotto of mermaids, which includes our original mermaid from earlier in the sequence. where once deer girl may have been a welcome outsider here her association with the wolves and her participation in an act of semi-canibalisim, (note bloody/inky hands) has not made them happy. the one with the braid is actively repulsed and angry at the presence of the wolf who snarls in response, the others are more passive and less invested in the action.

the textures and creating the environment of a water-beaten grotto with the look of local sandstone was an excellent challenge for me, the false printing in the sky gives an impression of light but present clouds or wind, and although the waterfall looks a little "furry" I like it, the composition is as always as stilted and formulaic as kubuki theater, but with more to play around with in terms of details, (note handprint on the rock) I hope this is less obvious.