These Hips Don't Lie 18/24 Linocut, Edition Of 5.

These Hips Don't Lie 18/24 Linocut, edition of 5.

this is a break from the deer girl sequence entirely. this piece was made for a prompt "the body in pieces" from my mixed media class. it is a self portrait in that all of the anatomy is either from female references from anatomical drawings, or drawn from pictures of my face, or from looking at my hand and toes. the text is made up of things that apply to me.

Just wanted to say, I think your prints are beautiful!

Thank You!

The Crows Screamed Overhead.

Iinocut print, 18" by 24" black oil based relief ink on Reives BFK White (just like almost all of my student work)

this was one of the three prints I whipped out at the end of my BFA year. as to what's going on, you remember that Hunter Dude from before? yeah, that's him in a tangle of limbs at the bottom having his intestines eaten by wolves and his arm gnawed on by deergirl. 

one of the first prints I made of her, was of her feeling very trepidations at her first taste of meat, and that was the meat of an animal, and here Deer Girl is complicit in the death and devouring of a human being. but again, it's not that the wolves are bad, they're wolves. they have wolf morals. this carcass is one of many who have encroached on their land and are in conflict with their folk, and they would not consider it to be in any way to be wrong to eat any living being who is not another wolf or honorary other wolf. (and that one has to be earned one way or another, mostly it's a linguistic thing, like many cultures, my wolves will accept anybody who can speak their language and might respect anybody who tries)

wolves have carnivore morals. it's not "evil" just because it's different.

deer girl on the other hand, despite being half beast and half human, is not usually a carnivore, despite her human-ish omnivorous dentition. for the wolves eating meat, and the death of others is a part of what they are, for her it is a choice. she's choosing sides in a conflict with no winners, and no good guys.

the 21 crows are reminiscent of the "evil avians" in the fellowship of the ring who are the eyes of the dark lord, they are a jury casting watchful judgement over the scene and also clamoring for blood themselves.

the culmination of the wild hunt.

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this is also a print I thought would absolutely never ever sell, it makes the rest of my cutesy little forest scenes look edgy and I like how it's composed, but I never expected to sell even one of these. it's not commercial, it's not cute, it's not all that pretty, it's about devouring your muse and betraying what you thought were your principals.

not exactly art for over the kitchen table.

I sold one at modsock to these really nice older couple who were absolutely taken with it. I had to keep myself from blurting out "Really? That one?  the one with all the cannibalism? I only keep it around to distract people from the more overtly psycho-sexual themes in the others. you can't possibly like That one, let me sell you something else" Instead I said "really? and answered their questions.

it is the best thing to have people buy something I made from my own creative soul because they love it so much they have to look at every day. That, o' best beloved,  is the heady wine of professional validation.

"It Was News, And Like All News Worth Spreading, It Was Bad News"

Copperplate Intaglio Print done in hardground and aquatint. edition of 12.

I enjoy the process of intaglio. it is one of the more process heavy and yet also one of the most forgiving forms of printmaking. if I make a mistake carving a block of wood or linoleum, it is unfixable, if I mess up a lithograph in any of the million ways known and as yet undreamed of in the mind of man that there are to mess up a lithograph, there may be no saving anything. but if you mess up a plate of copper you can always go back. even if that means you have to hand-stipple it in hardground, or burnish it until your fingerprints wear off, there is a way.

there are some choices that are less frustrating than others, however.

the big thing that I have learned is you should ideally aquatint your plate once if you want deep dark blacks. even if you don't want them everywhere, you can always either block out and stage your etches or burnish them back, both of which I did here. what you can't do is get deep dark even blacks without giving your plate time enough in the etching bath to get the deep grooves you need.

etching for 30 minutes and then taking the aquatint off, (to proof it or whatever) and then reapplying your aquatint and etching for another 30 minutes will not give you the same etch as just going for 60 the first time around.  (alright, I just realized that this is confusing, so I made a little diagram in mac-paint to demonstrate my point)

this isn't something Ben went over in class, I figure much of the time he just expected us to intuitively understand what we need to do to get the results we want, once we understand what the process we are expected to do is, and how to do it. this is not always the case. I feel that a lot of rookie mistakes in printmaking come from fussing over your plate instead of trusting in the process and being patient.

so, there's my secret on getting nice deep even tones out of aquatint.

to get bright whites right next to them, I used a piece of newsprint and rubbed them out after using the tarlitan to ink it, and then went back in with the tarlitan to even it out if I hit a dark bit on accident. it takes patience and a warm-but-not-hot plate.

I took intaglio twice in my time at WWU, I would like to do more of it, as I feel that I'm just getting good at it, but alas, it is hella expensive in all possible ways.

even though I tried to make pieces that worked with my other BFA material they turned out too small and too subtle to show well next to my large block prints and Chris's paintings. here on the internet however they can get equal billing, and that makes me happy.

"It Was Sad, And That's All There Was To It."

linoprint, 18" by 24" Black on Reeves BFK white. (so's most of what I do honestly)

the thing about this print is that I had it planned out before my dog died last Christmas eve. I was going home for the holiday vacation and I had almost everything sketched out. but I admit the raw personal tragedy is ultimately what makes this piece work.

originally I was going to have the "action" of the murder scene be front and center but I couldn't work on it without getting too worked up and in disassociating myself I pulled back the viewer too. I think it works much better and allows for the piece to be somber and calm. unfortunately this is another example of a picture where the important bits are often missed, forgive me for not wanting to go into too much gory detail.

things I like about this one: the nuthatch is rather good, as are the wolves, there are cast shadows and cast light from the lantern which is hung on the tree, the moon looks delightfully gibbous, and the roses as underbrush give the right feeling of a sacred and special part of the forest that has been invaded. I like this one quite a lot in point of fact.

submitted this to FuckYeahPrintmaking. but it's also mine and I made it myself with my hands, so I figured I'd put it up here and talk a little about it.

this was the third of the guardians series, the fox being crafty and devious in it's folkloric reputation is associated with the house of Slytherin. it's also, again, a bit more subtle than doing all of the house crests exactly as is.

the ivy that is crawling all over everything I initially thought was not a success, I wanted to carve out the background like that on the cat and rabbit I had made before, and that was unfeasible with the white edges of the decorative breed of ivy I picked. so leaving everything black seemed like a gamble and a lazy one at that, but I was sick and tired of carving those fussy little leaves, so I made little squiggles to fill up space and left it in the hands of the printmaking gods.

of course this turned out to be the strongest aesthetically, and consistently the most popular of the four guardian panels. 

My name is Katie Powell, I have a BFA in printmaking from Western Washington University.  My Tumblr is a bit of a letter to my grandmas, who still I refuse to “friend” on facebook, so they can still easily see what I make.

this is a fox.