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

"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.

Lantern.

12" by 15" linoleum block print, edition of 4.

(in retrospect I should have made as many as possible of this because it's pretty popular) this was meant to be a set of four (as these are a cut quarter of one of my usual blocks) that tied up the story a little bit, showing objects that are left behind or incidental to the various storylines of the whole deer-girl thing. I got as far as the lantern and the antler, I partway carved a seashell necklace on a rock with a starfish, and the bones of a rabbit being nosed by another rabbit would be the logical fourth one I guess, that or maybe the bowl the tree people own with four frogs swimming in it.

it is a set of two, because I ran out of time at the end of the year, I may carve and finish it anyways because I still have the blocks for the two I didn't print. (note to all'yall who may be worried about the exclusivity of my editions, I threw away all of my blocks after I graduated because they were gross and oily and I had no place to keep them where they would not seep vegitable oil all over everything, one more thing I like about acrylic ink)

moths to a candle flame, it's such a bad idea but it's so pretty, to navigate by the moon of your life and not the moon of the sky, and then it burns you up. so artsy and poetic no? such a classic, all of the item-series show items and animals interacting, and they are really just simple little things. 

so many stars though.

stars are a big thing for me. when I was a kid (and still) I really loved my glow-in-the-dark stars all over my ceeling and walls of my room, ever since I got to go on a semi-camping trip to the wilderness and saw what the sky really looks like away from all the danged light pollution I have been fascinated with the milky way. although I am not particularly interested right now in recreating the look of actual sky, I want that kind of Narnian feel of the familiar and unfamiliar at once. stars from a different sky. and I want that look of wilderness and inhuman landscapes and being able to see all the stars is a mark of that.

and then I carve them out, all five points, one at a goddamn time.

it's one of those things people don't tell you about being an artist, inspiration may be the spark that starts you, but your time and energy are the coal you have to burn if you want the steam engine of your artistic vision to reach the shores of proper physical fruition, and not crash on the unmerciful shores of conceptual art.

also, you have to train yourself to be receptive to inspiration, all the skill in the world does no good to nobody without that 2am magic.

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.

Rabbit, Colored version, currently cherished in private collection.

(that's right I sell things)

How are you so good at Lino printing? I'm trying to self teach myself!!!!

Short answer: Thank you so much! I really like making all of my art and I've had a lot of practice.

Long answer: I went to school and spent roughly 6 years doing nothing but learning how to skillfully make art, how to know the world how it really is, and how to have big cohesive thoughts and opinions about anything given enough time to write it all out. College! I recommend it.

I spent a lot of 2010 to 2012 working on the pieces you see here on my tumblr and if they were organized chronologically, you'd see how much I improve from one project to the next due to the feedback I received from my friends and teachers both in critique and informally when I asked for help.

Printmaking is very process oriented, if you want to get better at the process: you should try taking a class or at least watching a demo at an art supply store, that way you can see somebody do it live and ask them questions as they go along. Ideally you'd get to use a press too, I may be stuck using a spoon to print with now, but nothing beats a press for making it easy to print big.

But, if you think you've got a handle on the process (hint, warm up your linoleum a bit and it will become easier to carve) the rest of it is just practice, and figuring out what you want to make and how you want it to look, before you try and do it, without getting bored because you over-thought the idea, or paralyzed by fear that the finished product won't be as good as it already is in your head.

The trick to that is also practice.

The other thing that allows me to create interesting art is that I had to find my center to know what I wanted to talk about in my art. I think everybody goes through this, you’ve got the tools, you know the procedure, now what? what do you want to draw?

Finding your center, your genius-sprit, your idea-particle detector, your muse, your omnivorous all devouring cultural trash compactor, or whatever you call the place where the ideas come from, is important, but everybody already has it, you just have to practice using it.

If you don’t have it yet, or don’t think you do, write out a list of things you’d like to draw normally, things you’re interested in learning more about, your areas of expertise (be they archeology or pop-culture hair styles) things you wish you’d made, things you know you could make better than the original, the things (or people) you obsess over.  What is the best of your life? The worst of it? What can you not stop thinking about?

The things that itch at me, the stuff I absolutely have to shout from the mountaintops, are the things I make art about. Sometimes if I don’t think I have anything I go chase ideas. I drink scotch with friends and talk, or stay up late until my feet feel too comfy and the birds are chirping at the sunrise, or I stare at the computer screen at my job and have a pang of angst and I keep a sketch book and I draw any and every little thought that comes into my head.

And then I do my best to take the little fluttering light of an idea and manifest it right. Sometimes I manage it, other times I don’t do as well as I’d hoped. But there is always next time.

Oh, and also.

If you don’t manage to print square on the paper, either make a jig to hold everything in the right place, mount it right  when you frame it. or use enough paper so that you can cut it square after the fact.

Somebody somewhere will love everything you do.  If you have something genuine to say it’ll speak to somebody. No matter if you don’t think it’s good enough or not. There’s no such thing as perfection, there is only hard work and being true to yourself and your idea.

Thanks again for the compliment, it means a lot to me.

 Happy New Years and good luck to you.

Talking With Her Was Deeply Refreshing.

linoblock print, 18 by 24, black and white, same as the rest of them.

so, this was one of my fall quarter prints, it's kind of an apology for the other mermaid prints I had made by then. I wanted to make something sweet and pretty and I wanted to put some serious care into the little foreground details and I think I succeeded at that, the background runs into trouble mostly because I needed more practice at clouds and mountains and oceans.

this print is also an effort to make sure my series unambiguously passed the Bechdel Test, but they're probably talking about boys.

the madrona tree above them and the blooming waxy-leaved strawberries underneath are both plants that exist around here shown in their appropriate environment of an ocean cliffside and that's part of what I'm trying to do with my mythological things. I want to take the typically euro-centric mythos of my upbringing and make it local, make it personal. I could incorporate, and I have considered incorporating, more of the native PNW imagery but I don't want to be disrespectful so mostly I hold off on it.

now I say mostly, because these are carvings, they are monochromatic and I do take some inspiration from the traditional formline styles of native bent-wood boxes. I am however, just using that as a way to think about composing and balancing my monochromatic compositions, not as a way to think about making shapes nor yet as a stylistic decision. I can't say I'm not apeing the content of native art though, because I am talking about a personal/shamanic mythos, and I am mostly depicting animals and part-animals. but both of those things are common world wide, so I don't worry about it.

DeerGirl herself recalls both the Grecian images of diana as lady of the hunt, and a feminized image of the horned Sorcerer in the cave of Les Trois Feres. other than that I bet you could find more than a dozen different interpretations of a girl wearing antlers on Tumblr alone. and things go in and out of popularity but images of my mermaids are always popular.

go figure, ideas are weird like that.