Stole The Idea From Christine, Who Still Did It Much Better Than Me In Her Use Of The Phrase "don't Sweat

stole the idea from Christine, who still did it much better than me in her use of the phrase "don't sweat the technique" although I feel I'm taking the phrase more literally than she did. you will notice my backwards letter "N"s all over the place, (even carefully done as still backwards on the depicted block in my hand)  and my left hand depicted as covered in bandages, and the numerous weird printing errors that appeared on every use of this block.

it is a print about how I really ought to sweat the technique a little more.

it is a print of me, holding a speedball carving tool and the block that I will carve to become this very image of me. Recursion! and the block within a block is holding a little print but the resolution breaks down pretty fast even though I wished to imply it was this image again.

it was done for fun. I regret nothing.

this slide show is about my progress putting together my fish drawing. these photos were taken over time as I worked to make the tedium of a million little textures more interesting.

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.

an older print and far smaller than my original ones, this was a first draft of the idea that deer girl has lady friends she can talk to, they are mermaids and inherently more feminine, I had toyed around with the idea that this is where the dress came from, an issue still unexplored, but everyone knows mermaids are naked, or they have little starfish as mermaid bras.

except, as I know from my association with starfish at the aquarium, they have their little horrible chompy mouths dead center, so that would be right on the nipple and a terrible idea. this is infact what these two are talking about, mermaid fashion problems.

the other half of the problem is of course that these mermaids (my mermaids) can split their tails and have legs for limited periods of time on land, so how would you have clothes that transition well between environments while still keeping the mermaid comfortably damp? (I think they'd wear rubber boots, because their feet would be tender and need shoes, and the boots would hold lots of water so they could stay on land longer without drying out)

also my mermaids are man-eating sirens. because my mermaids are cool.

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.

so, I made exactly two of these. they were printed and carved in a flurry of last minute effort when I was putting together my BFA portfolio. I figured if there was one thing my portfolio needed (aside from more block prints to fill it out) it was a prayer.

I gave one of the prints to the European art history professor Carol Jansen, I think she liked it.

to give credit where credit is due, Christine took the block off my hands when I was in the drawing stage (when I was nearly done with the drawing stage I might add) and re-drew it for me. I gratefully carved her work and it is my carving and my printing but this piece was definitely a collaboration, I would have been lost otherwise.

obviously it is a copy of The Praying Hands byAlbrecht Dürer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duerer-Prayer.jpg