Fruit Alphabet Exchange Spoiler - Part 1

I've signed on for the Four Oceans Press Fruit Alphabet Exchange, and selected Q, for quince. I started off being pretty literal with my idea for the print:


It was a bit of a play on the word "quince" ("fifteen" in Spanish; fifteen is a multiple of five, and five is a distinguishing characteristic of plants in the rose family) - there are five stages of the quince in the sketch - seed, flower, early fruit, ripening fruit, rotting fruit, with five seeds in the rotting fruit. The wasp is just to emphasize the concept of decay (plus I thought it would add an element of interest to the design). This image was based on a botanical illustration from the 19th century by Franz Eugene Köhler:


Not bad, but not quite yet what I was wanting. I started looking for other Q things:

(OK, so for those of you wondering "but fleur de lis doesn't start with a Q!", it's the symbol of Quebec, so there!), and came up with this sketch:

Now is the fun part. I started to use just about every image editing software tool loaded onto my computer (obtained via various digital camera, printer and scanner purchases over the years), and figured out what I wanted to do using TechSmith's SnagIt Editor for this:

Printed it, scribbled on it with pencil for this:

Scanned again & made monochrome:

Then I graduated to GIMP for this next one:

And then the final:
It's not that I couldn't have used GIMP from the beginning, but I'm just learning the software and don't have an actual, hold-in-the-hands user manual (...yet! I just pre-ordered the new Beginning GIMP manual from Amazon yesterday and I am anxiously anticipating its arrival hopefully in early January). I was frustrating myself at the beginning of this process with what to do in GIMP, so abandoned it for more tried-and-true software until I ran up against complexities I couldn't handle otherwise. I am excited about learning GIMP, because I've got lots of ideas I'd like to experiment with using the software. So I managed to learn a couple of things doing this little sketch; but it's a very sophisitcated piece of software, so there is a lot more to be discovered!

Now, this is just the working sketch. I still have some tweaks to do, but what do you think?

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.

Graphics Tablet Coolness

I splurged and invested in a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet at the beginning of this year. I've been using it to play with GIMP, figuring out some of the bazillion things that can be done in that program. And is it ever fun. Allow me to demonstrate.

(BTW, please do not think that this is in any way, shape or form an exhaustive or excellent demonstration of the resources available with either of these tools, I'm just getting started and I've never used any kind of real image manipulation software before).

Start with this:


And then play a little bit with paths, feathering and gradient fills, add one ferry trip between Duke Point and Tsawassen, and Beginning GIMP, to get this:


While I think photo manipulation is fun, and I'm sure I'll do more at some point, I really wanted to be able to use these tools to draft ideas for printmaking, one way or another. I thought I'd try using a few of the tools I'd used in that exercise with this photo:


drew a path around Murri, copied & pasted into a new layer in another file (which I'd started with a black fill as background), then used the Ink tool to draw elements over top of the cut-out of Murri. I would hide the Murri cut-out layer intermittently to check my inking progress. It's quite a challenging tool, because it acts quite a lot like an old-fashioned cartridge or fountain pen in that if you're not careful, you'll blob ink everywhere! But the gorgeous variation in line thickness and shape, I just can't resist. I added a few gentle details using the regular Pen tool, too.


I went back to the first photo:


and did the same thing:

Then I thought I'd do a reverse of the colour scheme, black on white. So from this:


I got this:
Click on it for a larger view. I think it's my favourite so far.

One more:




Kind of similar to my earlier pen & ink Murri sketches on paper:



but much easier (especially as this photo Murri doesn't move around!)

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...)

Actually Working

Believe it or not, I have actually been working in the studio. I'm carving the block for the large block print for the Oceans of Art exhibition. It's taking a lot of carving though. I also did a little sketching today (shock!) but haven't scanned my sketches. I wanted to try to do the sketches as an interpretation of a feeling, rather than attempting a literal representation. It was kind of fun. I'll post them when I've finally digitized them.

And I've been a busy little social butterfly. I'm now on Twitter and Inkteraction, I created a group on Facebook for Printsy, still keeping Printsy's blog up to date, joined a few more Flickr groups.

And I've been spending much mental effort cogitating some ideas for different uses of printmaking. Nothing concrete yet. I think I need to get the big block carved first before I can get onto the next project. Anything else I want to do just involves carving anyway, and I like to get what I'm carving just done before starting on carving something else.

Oh yeah, and I just bought a Wacom Bamboo tablet and finally got it installed. I'll be playing with that I think tomorrow. Along with my Beginning GIMP book at my side, I'll start putting some of these ideas into illustrated form soon, I hope!

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!

Creativity in Craft

Remember my lovely little Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet? I'm still having fun with it (although less time spent on art lately than I'd like, sigh). Anyway, the little tablet has no protection when I travel back & forth with my computer, so I crocheted myself a Bamboo Pocket. See my post here for the details, but this is the end result:


WARNING: Christmas card spoiler - if you don't want to be surprised in your mail next month, read no further!!

Here's my latest creation - I don't have time this year to carve and hand print Christmas cards, so we're going with digital ones, based on a riff off this original digital sketch:

For those of you real digital artists out there, fear not, I realize this is quite amateur, but what the heck, I had fun. I would never call myself a digital artist (check out crackskullbob for an extremely talented selection of mostly digital illustrations); I just goof around with my tablet & GIMP. The real purpose ultimately is to create templates to carve for my relief printmaking, but sometimes it won't get that far. This is one of those times. Sorry for the cop-out this year, folks. Better luck next year.

2009 Year In Review

I thought I'd do another pat on the back year in review this January, rather than a "to do" list of resolutions. So to start with here's what I sold in 2009 - thanks to my lovely purchasers for their support!

SOLD!
1. Copy Cat, 2. Hibou, 3. California Quail,
4. Kermode Bear, 5. Orca Whale, 6. Stretchy (second state)7. Pulleys II (a), 8. Industrial Perch, 9. Lounging, 10. Soueee!

I have my art available for sale at two new (to me!) locations: The Upstart Crow in Delta, BC, and Studio Todorovic in Calgary, Alberta.

Here are all the prints that I completed in 2009:

PRINTED!
1. Oyama, 2. Sitting, 3. Lounging,
4. Goofy, 5. Flow VII, 6. Flow VI,
7. Flow V, 8. Flow IV, 9. Flow III,
10. Flow II, 11. Flow I, 12. Exposed,
13. Soueee!, 14. Vantage Point, 15. "Queen Of..."

I also did a lot of field sketches and Murri sketches, as well as purchased and started to learn how to use my new graphics tablet & GIMP program.

I taught a wonderful printmaking workshop in Williams Lake:

I attended a windy and cold "summer" outdoor art show and got to demo printmaking while I was there:


I was also invited to participate in a wonderful artists' retreat in Bamfield on the west coast of Vancouver Island, check out what fun we had (day 1, day 2 and days 3 & 4) and some of the art I created.

I carved and printed the largest relief print I've yet done, donated one of the edition to a great cause, and was accepted into the Federation of Canadian Artists' 2009 Spilsbury Medal Show with another one of the edition.

I had many pieces accepted into various local exhibitions:

EXHIBITED!
1. Exposed, 2. Vantage Point, 3. Being Shod,
4. Soueee!, 5. Pays d'Hiver (Winter Country), 6. Kinsol

I participated in a couple of print exchanges:

EXCHANGED!

1. Oyama, 2. "Queen Of..."

I added heaps of links to my various Squidoo lenses on Printmaking, and spent a lot of time adding many fabulous interviews and "Who's Printsy" posts to our Printsy blog. If you're a printmaker on Etsy, check it out!

So, all in all, despite the fact that I didn't feel very productive this year, I actually accomplished more than I realized. And now on to more art in 2010 - wishing everyone a healthy, happy, creative & productive upcoming year; thanks for sharing my journey!