Wet Canvas Exchange - Printmakers Gone Wild

I've known about this exchange for months. For months, I've been busy at work, and hoping that I'll get some time (and energy) free for this. Then I got my dizzy spells back again last month and that put a stop to anything remotely creative. Finally, finally, I was able to sit down and consider some options. I started with one image, and while I liked the idea, the execution was far to abstract to be even remotely recognizable. I don't mind abstract, but I wanted it to be a bit more obvious. Next idea was lovely, started work on that, then realized I just did not have time for a four colour reduction in a minimum of 20 edition. So, now what?

Flipping through my photos, I came across one that I thought might work. And it did, rather nicely, I feel.

Oyama
Technique: relief print
MDF carved with Dremel
Media: Daniel Smith w/s relief ink
(carbazole violet, phthalo blue, burnt umber, carbon black, permanent red)
Dimensions: approximately 9"x6"
Edition: 28
Year: 2009

The problem with a blend or rainbow roll is that it works so much better when your roller/brayer is the same dimension as the print. Mine, even my beautiful new one from Takach, is not. So the colours were applied:

1. Darkest blue with a little brayer
2. Darkest blue to lighter blue with the Takach
3. Lighter blue to pinkish with another smaller brayer

Most of the edition are remarkably good; a few have a couple of solid horizontals that I'm not 100% pleased with. There's also a bit of a porous spot in the MDF which sometimes came through a little bit lighter than I'd prefer, but it actually didn't detract from the image, and added to the blend remarkably well, I thought.

Next time, I'll try sealing the MDF first with something like primer, to see how that goes. That's what people have been telling me, and everyone seems so astonished that I don't seal the MDF first. Generally, it's not been a problem, but once in a while...

Anyway, off to the post office to ship this off!! Hopefully it'll get there in good enough time to not be too horribly late!

More Murri

He's just such a fun subject to work with.

So, continuing with the theme of turning digital sketches into block prints:

Lounging
MDF block print, Dremel carved
Daniel Smith water soluble inks on grey Rising Stonehenge paper
© Amie Roman

Sitting
MDF block print, Dremel carved
Daniel Smith water soluble inks on grey Rising Stonehenge paper
© Amie Roman

Go with the Flow

I am pretty sure that my Exposed print is of sufficient value to cover the "cost of entry" to the Oceans of Art exhibition at the Nanaimo Art Gallery, opening reception on Thursday June 11, 7-9 pm; however, I also thought that a few smaller pieces may be appreciated, as it can sometimes be difficult to sell large pieces.

I had done a sketch of a piece of kelp (Macrocystis) that I'd photographed on Brady's Beach that I've had sitting in the back of my mind since I did it, with the intention of a reduction cut.

I started off with a yellow ochre layer (didn't photo it), then later did a separate set of prints with a blend (rainbow) roll using yellow ochre, carbazole violet, and phthalo green:

Flow II
MDF block print, Dremel carved
Daniel Smith water soluble inks on green kitakata paper
© Amie Roman

and then for some reason, printed the remaining ink on the block (not reinking the block) over the ochre layer and got this:

Flow I
MDF block print, Dremel carved
Daniel Smith water soluble inks on green kitakata paper
© Amie Roman

After I finished enough prints for editions for those two, I decided to mess around a little and ended up with these two monoprints:

Flow VI
MDF block monoprint, Dremel carved
Daniel Smith water soluble inks on white Rising Stonehenge paper
© Amie Roman

Flow VII
MDF block monoprint, Dremel carved
Daniel Smith water soluble inks on white Rising Stonehenge paper
© Amie Roman

Then I got to the part that I'd really intended all along! I carved another layer for the reduction (only one; I wanted to keep it very simple). I printed over some of the Flow I prints (but kept some set aside for their own small edition):

Flow III
MDF block reduction print, Dremel carved
Daniel Smith water soluble inks on green kitakata paper
© Amie Roman

And then, of course, had to print over some of Flow II, too (also setting aside some of them with only the first blend roll for their own small edition):

Flow IV
MDF block reduction print, Dremel carved
Daniel Smith water soluble inks on green kitakata paper
© Amie Roman

This second, carved layer was also a blend roll, but subtle to see, except for in the edition I did on its own:

Flow VII
MDF block print, Dremel carved
Daniel Smith water soluble inks on white Rising Stonehenge paper
© Amie Roman

There are so many things about this series that I'm absolutely tickled by:

1. The simplicity of the carving is exactly what I had wanted to achieve, and very effectively reflects the gorgeous lines and shapes of the Macrocystis frond that I'd sketched.
2. The success of the rainbow roll in capturing the oil-slick colours of a slightly decaying, washed up piece of kelp on the beach.
3. The subtleties in value contrasts between II and III which again, really captures the ever-changing colour shifts of a washed up piece of kelp on the beach.
4. I got to do a series!! And I played a lot, both with the colour and the printing.

Plus, my baby press is an utter jewel. Love it!

Oh, yeah, and I'd just invested in a set of Foredom ceramic rotary tips for my Dremel tool, and they are absolutely fabulous for carving the MDF in the way I want to.

As you can see, I had a very productive couple of days last week. I won't be donating each of these, but I'll pick a couple to frame up and add to the show.

Now I'm going to be away from the studio for at least another week or so, but hope to get back to it when I return, as I've got lots of ideas that I'd really like to work on.

Birthdays

I have actually been doing a little art, here and there (a little more this week, but we'll get to that in another post); I've just not had a lot of enthusiasm about posting. I spend most of my day on a computer for work, and I have two weekly posts over at Printsy, so by the time my "spare" computer time rolls around, generally I would rather play with GIMP, or catch up with the Reader (yeah, I know, I've not posted anything about that, either, but there have been some good ones, so hopefully I'll be able to pull together something for you on that next week). So, this blog suffers. Bad, Amie, bad.

Well, I had three birthdays (two within days of each other in April, one at the beginning of May) to come up with cards for; fortunately, two of the recipients aren't fussy and were happy with the same card. I took two of the images that I'd played with in GIMP, and turned one

Goofy Murri - digital drawing
© Amie Roman

into a very "quick & dirty" relief print:

Goofy - MDF block print, Dremel carved
Daniel Smith water soluble inks on card stock
© Amie Roman

and the other:

Sitting - digital drawing
© Amie Roman

into a watercolour:

Sun Spot - watercolour
© Amie Roman

All cards were enthusiastically received, and I'm safe for another year (oh, well, until Christmas...)

Further Printing - "Exposed" Block Print

Well, after some challenges yesterday, the challenges continued this morning. I received some excellent direction from fellow printmakers with much more experience than I on Wet Canvas. Taking some of those suggestions on, I did manage some better success this afternoon after switching to Faust AquaLine water-soluble inks, still on the kitakata paper. I don't know why. They are more transparent (as discussed with Becky Heimann on Inkteraction), which makes building up darks somewhat more of a challenge. But, the print seemed to go better, and although I did get some "push", it wasn't as bad as with the Daniel Smith inks seemed to get.

Some details:

Anyway, a printmaking friend of mine who's seen my press sent me extremely detailed instructions to set the roller height from scratch, so I shall print those off and give that a go. I've never used an etching press, so I desperately needed these!

Next I'll try a blue black on white paper. The paper will be heavier, so overall the result will be different.

Large Block Print - Printed!

So after returning from Bamfield, Dave & I had a nasty, awful flu/cold for two whole weeks. The little time I was in the studio, I was definitely not up to carving that large block of MDF started in January. Then I got back to the studio recently, and worked steadily on the carving, to have it complete last night (yay!).

Murri investigating the carved block this morning

Close ups of the carving


This morning, Mom & I reorganized the studio (finally) so that it is laid out more usefully, and with better space.



So I took advantage of the better layout and inked up the block tonight. Mom helped me to pull some proofs; I'm having difficulty getting the pressure right on my etching press, mostly because I don't know what I'm doing. So this print was hand-burnished after going through the press, to make sure the transfer of the darks was uniform. This is a blend of carbon black and burnt umber Daniel Smith water-soluble relief ink, on natural kitakata paper.

(the above is a craptastic photo; it's supposed to be a natural buff paper with a dark brown ink)

We will be mucking around with the pressure again tomorrow morning.

Plus, I got to break in my new Takach brayer. I am in love!

Vantage Point

Dave & I went to Saltspring Island last summer, and wandered around for a day. Dave took me to a private warf on Fulford Harbour, from which you can look at some of the best marine life right off the dock. We had a great time looking there, then went for a bit of a hoof around Ruckle Provincial Park. Dave stood at the edge of one of the bluffs at Ruckle, looking out over the seascape, and I had to take a photo. The photo has been sitting in the back of my mind since then, and I picked up my sketchbook and rendered it in graphite (I'll have to edit this post later and add the sketch; I've not got my computer hooked up to the scanner, and I don't have a digital version of the photo).

I decided that I wanted to do the image in black and white only. This print was done with MDF and the Dremel; carving the fine lines was a bit of a trick. I had to use my v-gouge to define them a little better at the end, but overall, the Dremel worked beautifully. I'm planning on entering this and "Being Shod" in the Federation of Canadian Artists' Human Figure exhibition. As the deadline for submission is the end of January, and I won't be here in my studio until after the deadline, I stayed up late last night getting the first part carved, then finished it off this morning and printed this afternoon. I found that it was really a challenge to print this; it's just one colour (a mix of phthalo blue and Mars black), so building up the ink layer was a little trickier than with a reduction. And I kept smudging things, or the block would slip as I lay it down; all sorts of irritating little things. I finally managed an edition of 10, so that's great. The extras will be given as gifts to various family members, I reckon.


One of the things that I'm really excited about is that I've been doing more drawing and sketching. Up until now, I've been relying a lot directly on photographs; most of my prints are traced from my photos. I don't really like drawing human figures, yet I actually managed to do the sketch and capture the proportions and look really well. I suppose that might not surprise everyone, but it sure surprised me!

Being Shod - lessons in printmaking

The original photo for this print was taken by my grandfather. Mom has a number of wonderful old photos taken by her dad, as well as her mum's dad, and I'm hoping to translate some of them into prints. This photo was of a horse being shod in a logging camp. The background was pretty over-exposed, so I wasn't really able to get much good detail. So I didn't know what to do when I first started off; you'll see the background in the sketch is pretty vague.


Lesson #1 - decide on a background before you start carving. Because I hadn't decided on a background, I figured the first colour would make up the background by itself:


As a result, I changed my mind about the values in the drawing as I was working on the second layer. Then I decided on the background: I'd make it into the interior of a barn.

Lesson #2 - don't change your mind about values in the middle of carving.

As a result of changing the mind about the values, you'll see that the lightest value falling in front of the back leg of the horse is really high contrast, and not a great value choice. Also, by changing my mind about the background in mid-carving mode, I've got a "halo" around the subject matter, which really is a beginner relief printer's mistake. The background should define the foreground, and vice versa, without having to outline everything.

Lesson #3: Sometimes you can fake it to fix mistakes. I took a little bit of the first colour and dabbed with my fingertip over the light part that bothered me. Then printed the third and final layer on top:


The end result is much improved; you can't tell that I made the fix, and it makes the image read so much better. Once again, I am happy with this print; I seem to be on a roll this week! Good thing, because I'm going to be away from the studio (and press!) for the better part of January. I was trying to cram in as much as I could manage this week.

Once again, this print was carved in MDF with a Dremel, printed using Daniel Smith w/s relief inks on cream Rising Stonehenge paper. I think the dimensions are about 9"x7", and I managed a final edition of 6.

Pig finished

I spent the last few days finishing off the pig print, and it's finally done today. The more I work with the MDF and the Dremel tool, the happier I am with them.

This print was done with the Daniel Smith water soluble relief inks. I am very happy with their performance, too. I don't think that those inks were slipping during my Xocoatl print, but I am now positive that it was the black linoleum stretching instead. It's printed onto cream Rising Stonehenge paper; the colours of the photos are a little off. So if you look at the paper as being cream, that'll give you an idea of what the print should look like; these photos are a little too cool/blue.

The second colour was a pink made by mixing some permanent red and a little yellow ochre into the pink I'd used in the first layer.

The fourth layer is about 50/50 ink/medium mix, with mostly yellow ochre and a very little amount of burnt umber. I wanted the pink to come through more than if I'd just used yellow ochre straight out of the tube.

The final layer is a dark brown made up of quite a mix: there's a wee bit of phthalo blue, some yellow ochre, burnt umber, and a bit of mars black.


I'm very pleased with this print. I feel that I really captured the pigginess of the sow. I really like the colours that I used, too.

Work in Progress - Pig

For the last couple of years, we've been going to the local agricultural fairs in the autumn. It's great watching the kids with their animals, plus I take all sorts of heavy equipment (usually heritage tractors) photos. Mom took a few lovely pictures of a sow and her piglets, and this print is from the "extreme closeup" that she took. I think that the print is about 5" square (give or take). Here's the original sketch:


Unfortunately, the following are craptastic photos. I apologize. I'll scan the final when it's dry enough. Our studio only has natural light (great, but insufficient in winter for photography) and overhead fluorescent lights. Everywhere you stand, you cast a shadow over whatever you're working on. Ugh. But I have a great studio, and a great press, so I can't complain too loudly! Anyway, the first layer is a pale pink, second is a light blue. The print is on cream Rising Stonehenge paper, using Daniel Smith water-soluble relief inks.

First layer

Second layer

I am having a lot of fun with the Dremel, and am extremely impressed with the level of detail I can achieve. It sort of feels like I'm cheating, but what the heck!

Fruit Alphabet Exchange Spoiler - Part 3

I have finished the last two colours on the print! They look pretty darned good, but were a little tricky to do simultaneously. Worth the fiddling, though, because now it's done!!

Keeping with the lighter colours that I'd started with printing (rather than the bold ones from the original design), I did a light, spring green and a slightly light orange-red.



Rolling up the two colours was mostly easy, with a few places I had to be very careful where the brayer went on the block. The final little dot of red on the tip of the crown was added by just dipping my fingertip into the rolled out ink on the slab and dabbing it onto the block at the end of the roll up.

The alignment continued to work really well for this print; most of what I printed are worth keeping from an alignment perspective (a nice change from my last exchange print for Four Oceans Press!). You can see on this photo that there's a lot of "noise" on the block: areas which are proud enough to catch the ink from the brayer.


When hand-burnishing, this can be very challenging to avoid and/or clean up. When printing with the block placed first onto the press bed, then the paper on top, the "noise" can get picked up as the press somewhat shoves the paper into the recesses of the block. This technique of placing the paper on the press bed, then the block on top, eliminates the worry of picking up accidental ink from the recessed areas.

So I'm quite pleased overall with the final image:



I took a course on composition this past fall with Lalita Hamill (who is, by the way, a fabulous instructor and very knowledgeable about composition) through the Federation of Canadian Artists. We discussed the use of colour as a design element: a tool to help the viewer's eye be led around an image, or be drawn to a focal area. Red is for areas of focal interest, yellow helps to move the eye around, and blue can be used as a boundary, or rest area for the eye, or as a contrast. Of course, these are huge generalizations, but they're interesting to keep in mind.

I tried to thoughtfully utilize colour in this image. Part of the colour choice was, of course, related to the subject matter: for example, in order to symbolize Quebec with the fleur de lis, the colours really needed to be white and blue. Do you think that the colour use in this piece helps to move your eye around it? What do you find that you look at first? How about the path your eye takes around the piece?

One of my favourite uses of colour in this is the touch of red in the quince; that little hit of warmth, as well as the fact that the only bit of gradient carving occurs there (everywhere else is solid colour block), helps to bring attention to the quince, which is, essentially, the point behind this piece. The queen's direction of gaze also draws an imaginary line to the quince, another device to draw the viewer's eye.

I find this piece quite fun. There's a lot of stuff to keep you interested. All of the symbols that I ended up using for Q were:

Quince (of course!!)
Queen
Quill
Queue (her braid)
Quercus (oak leaves & acorns)
Quilt
Question
Quebec

Did I miss any? I hope the participants in the exchange enjoy the print in their collection as much as I enjoyed developing it.