Digital Work - Bullrider

While I've not been in the printmaking studio (other than to plant up our seedlings for the summer...), I've done a little bit more preparation for some printmaking in the future.

We used to attend the Williams Lake Stampede, but haven't been for a few years. I took lots of photos at the last two with the intention of turning them into something artistic at some point. I had done a few mixed media images from some of the photos: semi-blind contour sketches followed by watercolour monotype and coloured pencil crayons (if I manage to dig up one of those pieces, I'll take a photo and post at some point), but nothing much since. I hadn't decided how else to use the images, then the other day I thought maybe I'd try playing around with GIMP and my Wacom graphics tablet like I did with Murri, and see what came out of it.

So I started with a photo that I'd scanned a while ago, and cropped a little:

I tweaked the image so that it was then just greyscale:

Using a new layer and the Ink tool in GIMP, this is the first sketch:

While I was pretty happy with it, Dave & my cousin, Len, commented that they couldn't figure out where the bull ended and the rider started. I've highlighted the problem area here:

It seemed to them that the chaps of the rider were actually the back of the bull, and thus the leg disappeared and didn't "read" properly: it seemed like the rider was positioned side-saddle. We chatted about what I could do to improve the image, and we decided that as long as there was some kind of distinction between the back of the bull and the chaps of the rider, that it should probably work. Here is the second attempt:

While the leg still disappears to a certain extent, I'm thinking this will probably be it. I do like the composition better, and with a black & white simplification, you definitely can lose detail, but that's something that appeals to me, personally. Any comments or suggestions?

There will likely be more of these as I can take the time to do them; there's already another under way.

WIP - Large Block Print

This image has been burning a hole in my brain for about a decade (maybe a wee bit longer).


My step-mom took my friend & me to the west coast of Vancouver Island to spend a lovely day puddling around on the beach and in the tidepools near Port Renfrew. A perfect way to spend time, I always think (but then, being amongst marine biologists all my life has kind of made it difficult to think otherwise).

I had originally started a pen and ink sketch years ago, but abandoned it as not being able to hold my interest. Then I was reminded of the image again when I saw Sherrie York's recent post on her blog for her beautiful reduction linocut "High Tide Detritus":

High Tide Detritus by Sherrie York

So I thought to myself, "OF COURSE!" a linocut would be a brilliant way to deal with that image. Well, ok, not linocut, because I'm working in MDF lately, so a block print to be more precise. While I love Sherrie's handling of the colours and her reduction, I wanted to make the image even more abstract, so I've decided that for this one, it'll be all about black & white.

I took a little time procrastinating because I didn't have the photo here (such a pain being between two residences where almost all my art crap is with my studio/press, and I'm not there right now!), so I asked Mom to find, scan & email it to me. That took a little doing on her part; did I mention I am between two residences? That means boxes of crap in both places, neither particularly well organized. Well, standing "O" for Mom, she fished out the photo, digitized it in good pixel resolution, and sent it my way.

The next stage was deciding whether to draw onto a piece of paper then transfer that onto the block, draw onto a piece of paper adhered to the block and carve through, or draw on the block directly. The last won out; the MDF is very smooth and delightfully simple to draw directly onto, and it erases very well. I figured there would be just too much margin for goofing up the image if I tried transferring it in any fashion, so direct drawing it was. I feel that I get a bit closer to my pencil via my carving that way, kind of like the way lithography is more autographic: it's the direct result of the drawing tool, rather than being one step removed. Well, this is still the one step removed with the carving tool making the actual print markings, but at least it's a little closer with the drawn image rather than a transferred image.

So I waited a little bit longer until Dave was able to go pick up the MDF from storage (I have a lifetime supply thanks to an auction-savvy relative who obtained a number of large sheets for a construction project that is no longer going forward).

Then I had to decide on a final dimension. I had picked up a 100 pack of kitakata from Daniel Smith last spring, and I thought that would make a lovely support for this image. So not really "white" so much as a natural buff colour. Anyway, Dave very generously not only retrieved the heavy sheets of MDF, he also chopped them up to dimension on the table saw. This block is 16"x20".

I fiddled with the image on GIMP, cropped it to my liking to make the composition a little more intriguing (I hope), then printed it to a scalable dimension. My final image size is 14"x18", so I overlaid the printout with a grid of 1/2" squares, then I drew out a grid using 1" squares on my block.

The setup was finally finished: now onto drawing!

Well, that in itself took the better part of two weekends and a few days after work (when I wasn't too mentally exhausted to do so). One square at a time. That actually made the process much easier, and caused the image to become even more abstracted in my mind, even though it's a fairly good literal representation of the original (GIMPed) image. Here's a slide show of the development of the image:

Here are snapshots of the development of the image:


You can see it progressing across the block. In actual fact, I worked on it upside down so that I was going from left-to-right, and so I wouldn't smudge it. OK, and probably to add yet another level of abstraction so that my brain just drew shapes in each little 1" square and didn't panic about the huge project overall.

And the final one that I'm working on now to carve:

You can go to my Flickr account to view larger versions of all of the stages of the drawing.

I have actually started carving, but it's going to take a very long time. There's a ridiculous amount of detail, and I decided that for much of it, it'll take the teeny tiny carving bit on my Dremel. It seems to be working really well so far. Now it has to make the migration over to the studio; I'm thinking of spraying Krylon fixative on the block to keep the graphite from smudging, as I'll be sanding the block prior to inking it anyway. I'll also wrap it up in craft paper and maybe in a garbage bag (for moisture protection), too. And it'll probably get stuck into my large portfolio case, just for good measure. After that many hours of drawing, I would really like to keep it in good shape to work from!

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.

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.

Christmas Card Chaos

I couldn't decide on what to do for Christmas cards this year. I usually do something for family & friends, as well as for customers who have purchased my work during the year (so that translates to roughly 60 cards altogether), but this year I also had two print exchanges for an additional 40 cards. After Goosey's demise, I had wanted to do something to commemorate him again, but the idea I had was more complicated than I felt like working on (especially for so many prints).

Sketch for card using Goosey as the subject
(those are snowflakes in the background)

I had worked on another image a couple of years ago in acrylic that I was never very happy with, but I liked the idea:

Acrylic on board, 8"x10"

I really like the feeling of the finch sitting on the cold, bare, slightly snow-dusted branches, so I took the same source photo and simplified the overall look to get this year's general (i.e. to friends & family) card:

I carved the image into wood-mounted linoleum and printed it using the Adana 4x6 No 2 on Strathmore Bristol paper using Speedball water-soluble inks. The image is 5 1/2"x3". I was pretty happy with the text (first time I've used it really in a print - have to write backwards for the text to read correctly; cheers for computer software & printers!!). It performed sufficiently, but I still wasn't 100% pleased.

I thought I'd try my hand at chine collé. So I printed the piece first on kitakata green paper (a thin Japanese paper), then mounted it (using nori paste) onto Cartiera Magnani "Pescia", a stiffer, supposedly "creamy smooth" printmaking paper, although it's really rough (cold pressed) with quite a tooth, and very thick. I'd ordered it from Dick Blick in a "what the heck" moment, but I don't really think it's appropriate for relief printing, or at least not what I do.

Really, for the chine collé, you're supposed to place your fine paper on top of your inked plate, dust with nori powder or paste the back of the fine paper, then place your mounting paper on top, and run everything through a press. As I don't have a press, this wasn't going to work. And the whole point to using finer paper was so that I wouldn't have such a hard time burnishing to transfer the image. Unfortunately, the Speedball doesn't ever really loose its water solubility, so the moist paste spread very thinly on the back still slightly activated the dried ink on the front, resulting in a few of these with a couple of tiny smudges here or there.

The card will be folded between the text & image, so that the image sits facing forward. The fold is not centred, so you end up with kind of an interesting card. I love the pale green of the kitakata paper, and it has a beautiful finish that's just a dream to print on. I'm definitely going to use it again.

Finally, I had one more image I wanted to play with. I have been working on this image in various print media over this year. First was a stone lithograph, then an acrylic monotype, and now I've done it in a linocut relief print.

The original image was a pencil sketch of a photograph I took up at Dad's one winter. I really love the contrast of the aspen against the conifers in the background, and the neat textures of the bark on the aspen.

For this relief print, I wanted the image smaller, so I scanned the sketch, reduced the dimensions, mirror-flipped it, and printed it off, then stuck it onto the lino block.

I used graphite paper to trace the image onto the block (so the graphite paper is placed between my working sketch and the block). This is great stuff because the resulting line is quite fine, and I can erase the graphite before I print, so that I don't get graphite transferring onto the final paper.

I removed all the areas that I wanted to stay white using wood carving tools to carve away the linoleum. Here's a photo of the inked up lino block showing the carving details:

I ran a few proofs and fiddled a bit with the image, but then was happy with the result pretty quickly. The final prints (so far only 20 for the second print exchange, but I think I'll do more), are on Rising Stonehenge grey paper, and the image size is 6.25"x3.5", printed using Faust's AquaLine water-soluble "Carbon Black". It's very buttery to use, a bit stinky, but I really like using it, and it seems to print quite well on heavy paper with hand burnishing (an unusual find, for me!).

Pays d'Hiver (Winter Country)

I'm very pleased with the end result (this photo is somewhat warmer than the actual print), and will be doing more than 20 for the edition. But my arms have given up tonight so I won't be doing any more prints for a little while.

Inspirations

While visiting my Aunt Jean this October, I took a few photos of her black and white cat, Booger. He's very photogenic, and I really wanted to do a print including him somehow. I was perusing my resource bookshelf for inspiration when my eye fell upon Persian Designs and Motifs for Artists and Craftsmen by Ali Dowlatshahi (1979, Dover Publications Inc., London). Within the pages of this book are some spectacular designs from various sources of Iranian artwork, from pottery to weaving to tile work. I spotted a page of geometric carved stucco designs from the 13th and 14th centuries, and thought that one of those would be perfect. Also a source of inspiration is an upcoming theme show "Red & Gold" at the Federation, which had to be submitted this past Thursday. Deadlines are always a great driving force for creativity!

I wanted to utilize one of these patterns from the book, but I didn't want it to be perfect. My first layer is a golden yellow, applied in a rainbow roll so that there was a value gradient from left to right. I also had the pattern break down at the fainter end, so that it looked like the tile was crumbling away from centuries of use.

First state

The next layer was also done in a gradient using the rainbow roll technique, but unfortunately, it's really subtle. You can't even notice it when I just printed the red alone on a white sheet of paper.

Second state

Red alone

The next layer was just the cat in blue (straight out of the tube). Now, this was a bit of a trick, because I wanted to save the final carving in order to produce a black & white image. If I did the true reduction where I remove everything that I wouldn't want to print in blue, I would have had to carve away all the background tile in red that you see above, but then I wouldn't have a plate to do the black & white image that I wanted. So I inked just the cat as best I could, and carefully wiped away the excess wherever I didn't want it with a lightly dampened cloth. This was rather time consuming and exacting, so I did this layer and the next (same problem with the reduction) in batches.

Third state

Finally, I didn't want the cat to be a solid object sitting on the tiles, so I repeated the pattern in the cat's body, but reversed (i.e. the dark value was now reversed with the light in the pattern). I also didn't want to obscure the face of the cat, so I tried to show a breakdown of the pattern similar to that of the tiles on the left-hand side of the image.

Final state - "Copy Cat"

This piece is done on Rising Stonehenge 245 gsm paper (white in colour) using water based Speedball inks, and carving an actual linoleum block for the first time in a really long time. I'm very happy with the composition; I especially like the echoing of the triangles just in the overall shapes of the cat itself, not just the repetition of patterns. I'm also happy overall with the way the colours worked, as that's not always easy with a reduction.

Because I'm so lazy, I haven't yet tried to set up Andrew Gott's ridiculously easy and apparently fail safe registration method, and as a result, I only have a tiny little edition size that I'm happy with (3 out of a total of 9 pulled, sigh!). This should teach me, but I still haven't done anything about it yet!! Maybe before the next reduction print :)

Powerhouse

Last year, Dave & I visited the Powerhouse at Stave Falls in Mission. It was the power generating station for the Lower Mainland for much of the 20th century. There are many fascinating displays on hydroelectricity and power generation, and they've got a lot of the old machinery and gauges etc. in this huge generating room. The machinery definitely caught my fancy, so I have many photos from that trip for potential source material.

This print was done using the reduction cut method. I started with a cream-coloured paper (Rising Stonehenge "Cream" 245gsm), and used three colours in Speedball water-based inks: orange, rusty brown, and a dark plum brown. The final dimensions are just shy of 4"x4" (10cmx10cm)The image is a very close up look of part of one of the generators at the Powerhouse.

Printing setup (click to view larger)

First state (low light conditions make it look a bit yellow)

Second state

Final state (this one is a bit white; I think I used a flash!)

As I was working on this edition, I also did a monoprint using the various states. This piece is 9"x19"; please click on it to get a larger view.

Powerhouse Array
(colours aren't really correct - image software editing low-light exposure)

I seem to work best at night, or at least that's when I get in the groove to work. So these were printed between 7 -1130 pm last night (hence the weird light conditions). I have a "monthly challenge" from POG that I need to work on next... maybe that'll be tonight's project!

The Highs and Lows of Reduction

Here's the latest contribution to the portfolio.

"Where the Lilies Grow"
Speedball water based ink (6 colour run) on Strathmore Bristol, cut from vinyl, edition size 6, dimensions 100mmx71mm (roughly, but slightly smaller than, 4"x2 3/4").

1. I wanted to convey a cathedral-like atmosphere; the place where these tiger-lilies were growing was by a road cutting through northern forest. The trees in the background seemed to be uplifted and bringing the lilies up with them. So here's the underlying composition I was using:

Doesn't really quite line up properly here, but the idea was to have a vanishing point off beyond the paper, to give it the image some lift.

2. Something I'm extremely happy with is the "relief quality" feel of this piece. I sometimes struggle with the medium; I don't necessarily make use of that special quality of the relief print where there's tool marks, and the special kind of tool marks inherent in relief printing. Here's a close up of the upper left hand corner where I feel this was particularly successful:

This is also a good example of why I enjoy using reduction - I feel that the layering of the colours is particularly lovely in this passage.

3. Something I constantly struggle with and am not happy about is smudginess in parts where there's a large area that's been cut away and non printing surrounding a tiny area I want to print with the last colour when I'm down to my last state of the plate.

This is an example from one of the prints that did not make it into the edition. What a pain that it happens AT THE VERY LAST COLOUR. Argh. One of the pitfalls to reduction!

The more I read on the printmaking section of the WetCanvas! forum, and the more I work with the vinyl blocks & Speedball inks, the more I figure I need to buy some better materials. So I'm awaiting my litho friend's list of litho goodies he wants before I put in an order to Daniel Smith for some stuff. I've had a look at people's suggestions throughout the forum on inks & papers, so I've got some ideas of what I'd like to try. I'm afraid I'm going to stick with water based for now, mostly from the fumes perspective (oil-based inks make me nauseous), although I might sample the water cleanup oil-based inks at some point. I'm also thinking about Natalia's technique of combining reduction & multiplate once I get some lino blocks. I can't do that with sufficient exactness yet because I cut and size my own vinyl blocks, and I'm not precise enough to get good alignment for multiplate printing. Besides, the material is squidgy, so it can deform, thus two cut as exactly as possible might still not align properly.

Anyway, I'm still learning, and still figuring out things with this medium, and having a lot of fun doing it. Overall, I'm quite pleased with this edition (wish it had been a wee bit larger, but... ehn), and I'm very happy with the way the image worked out; it was definitely what I saw in my mind. And I really like the colours, too, kind of delicate. I think the feeling is just right.