"She Was The Kind Of Person Who Read Books At Parties"

"She was the kind of person who read books at parties"

Intaglio print, black ink on white paper.

top was in the final edition, bottom is a proof.

really I should just scan this one, it's small enough to fit an office scanner, but I'm quite enjoying presenting these pieces as objects of ephermera rather than pure images presented without the context of the hands that made them. partly because the aesthetic impulse of printmaking is the idea that the image is more important that the object where the modern conception of high art holds that the object is more important than the image.

why yes, I have been re-watching Ways of Seeing by John Berger.

so should you.

on to process: this was the last intaglio print I made both for school and not. as intaglio, like most printmaking, is a bit of a bitch to set up at home. remember, all of these processes started out and existed in their day as production processes. they are designed to allow a printing company to churn out assembly line reproductions of pictures for sale to a mass market, this was true for Hokusai as Durer, just as much as it is true for me. printmaking is not a good media for a hobbyist to do the whole job of it every once in a while. it demands dedication and equipment.

anyways, when I make an etching, my process is to sketch it out on a piece of paper, sometimes I transfer that with iron oxide,  then I hard ground etch my general lines, then I go in and do one nice deep aquatint. I stopped out the sparks and the stars before I started to give the clean whites. mid-etch I used some alcohol on the smoke to the clouds to see if I could control the effects what had earlier turned out to be a happy accident. and then I etched it to black. after that proofed it, then worked it up and further controlled the smoke effects I had created with the alcohol by burnishing out the highlights I wanted.

mid-way through this process I turned it in for critique. after being blasted pretty hard for having a messy composition and having people completely ignore the parts I wanted them to pay attention to while being unhappy what what they did see; I cut the entire foreground out of the picture with the plate-cutter. I don't have an example of the picture before I did this, it was pretty bad.

this picture is about the beginning of my relationship with Seb. he seemed to like me, but I wasn't sure what to do with him. in terms of deer-girl paranarrative, it's about deer girl before she got mixed up with the wolves, not feeling like she fit in with the people who were supposed to be the right people to fit in with.

I feel like I can't entirely get a handle on how to draw Seb. (he is depicted as a part-animal person in this, but you can't see part-what because I haven't figured that out yet) I wonder if that's because he is not so good at projecting a consistent created persona, or because I'm nearsighted and somewhat face-blind. but, his face looks different to me every day. sometimes I have to close my eyes and hold him so I can smell him to tell that I have the right guy.

the nose knows. the nose always knows.

my little kitchen studio set up. I roll out slabs on that pane of glass, and I use acrylic ink for the easy clean up and relative non-toxicity (hard to be unsafe with a boring color like a carbon black I have to say) anyways, I have a small speedball roller and am using dickblick's black acrylic relief printmaking ink. works pretty good.

second picture is a table covered in some of the prints I made today. So Many Prints! I should list them on my etsy after the show goes down considering I think I may have a few left over. my main intention with these smaller prints is to make a thing at a lower price point so I can entice people to buy them and support me, even if they can't afford the larger prints, some of which I am going to price higher than others. (the complicated ones) I am not doing a closed edition on these (so I can always make more) and I might hand-color some of them.

acrylic ink is water soluble though, so we'll see how well that does.

alright so these are all the blocks I just printed this afternoon shown with a good example of the prints I made from them.

valentine's day Gunnels I intend on coloring. they will be pretty glorious, not that they aren't already

the rose was originally a study but I liked it and I think I still do.  it's pretty basic but it's easy to get bogged down trying to work small and I have to keep it iconic to make it work.

next after that is a trillium. same deal different flower.

after that, queen of pomegranates. her face looks like it was mde by De Kooning and the idea was kind of stupid so these are probably going to become mixed media. but the dog turned out rather well so I'm happy.

after that is slugs posed in a classic crowned ouroboros. which I happen to love, fits very well into my general theme of taking classic mythological and alchemical symbolism and making it out of things native and familiar to me.

ta- fucking dah.

Today I made a Christmas ornament. (and also did muh nails)

it is a snowflake made out of felt. I stuffed it with the little scrappy bits of felt that I had leftover so it's a bit of a little pillow. it looks good and is now hanging on my tree.

Yes, I copied the design off something I found on pinterest. because I am a hack. you'll note I didn't do as good of a job of it as Jody Bishel does, so I don't feel too bad about it.

Intaglio Print, black ink on white paper.

another one I will probably slap on a scanner later on, as unlike a lot of my stuff it's small enough to be scanned.

you know what, no explanations on this one, and no title. I've been talking enough on my other stuff. just look at it for a bit and figure out what you think is going on. that's just as valid as anything I have to say about it.

Chicken of the Woods (with a nuthatch and a chickadee)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetiporus_sulphureus