Intaglio - Tumblr Posts
at times it was stressful, but in the end i think the printmaking class i took this summer was a success
medium: etching ink (not sure what brand) and water-based markers on plaster of paris
Just wanted to add that the image in the stone is technically an intaglio. Cameos protrude outwardly, while intaglios tend to be negative images, but are mostly carved inward.
Gold ring with cameo of Pan, Byzantine, 12th century AD
from The Walters Art Museum
the title is "good time management" I have also called it "Kate vs. Kate" this was the first thing I made when I stopped making art of fish, it was inspired by how motivated I felt after the McNett Event when I got to smash a giant pinata as part of a giant howling mob.
(seriously, we'll get there with the deer girl prints, I just have to get there, gotta build up to a crescendo like that)
anyways, the dueling self portraits were made by first photographing myself on a computer downstairs with the PhotoBooth application, then printing them out, applying red iron oxide to the back and tracing them onto the asphaltum of the plate. so there you go, that's why the look so good despite my inferior drafting skills.
the hat and the knife, the fangs and the snake hair are of course made up elements worked into the figures, everything else is the days (more like nights) I spent aquatinting both my black and red plates.
I gave one of these to Spike, and I'm still really happy about that. I have one left and I think I'm keeping it, it would mean so very little to anybody else.
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 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.
"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.
"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.
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.