More Printing

Although things here have been a little chaotic, and also much, much too hot and dry, I have managed to get myself out to the studio a bit, and pull a few more prints. I think they are getting better, but I am no Master Printer. Yet.

This is the first print I have pulled of that acrylic dry point plate (that I posted about a couple of weeks ago). It is not so much composed as it is a collection of line sizes / weights / directions / etc. A sampler, if you will. There is so much new in this process for me that I most likely will claim every print as a test print for the next 30 years... This one looks especially funky because it does not fit totally on my scanner bed, and I did not want to mash it down, so the left side curved up and away, and seems blurry. In the actual print, it is not.

Revisiting these blocks. 

The two prints above are reprints of the same one I posted last week, with different technique, and the addition of retarder. Those both were beneficial changes to the process, I think.

This last one, however, actually has had a bunch of new cuts done to the block since last time I printed it. I tries printing this on top of prints I had already pulled (with the old cut), but this is a linocut, and the linoleum has become tremendously warped -- makes alignment / registration difficult. This print looks a little funny because the upper left corner is slightly over-inked, but also because this is a mixture of blue and black inks (plus retarder) just to see how that would go. I kinda like it, except the over-inked bit.

Finally Admitting to 2013

Maybe I was just really disappointed that the world did not end back in December? Maybe I just Have A Problem with winter? Probably we will never know why there has been no blogging for three months, although most likely the fact that I find the term 'blogging' fairly distasteful, something I am supposed to do when I am not feeling well.

Oh, jeeze, I think I'm gonna blog..!

ANYWAY, there are a few haps happening.

Exhibit 1A: A Silly Afghan

This is a work in progress, and although I expect it to become considerably larger, it is unlikely that it will get any less silly. Probably more so, if I had to guess.

Exhibits 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D: These Flowers

Regular Kind Watercolor

Watercolor Pencils

Still Life of Cut Flowers And Fruit Which Keeps Getting Eaten

Sketched with 4B .05mm mechanical pencil. Ask me about my Kuru Toga!

 I decided to work more on my life drawing skills, and last week picked up a cheap model at the hippie grocery store. (The flowers, I mean, what were YOU thinking??) I also have gotten much better about taking my sketchbook with me and sketching people and things and places when I am out in the world with a few minutes to spare. I often get busted drawing people, especially in restaurants, because I am the type to look at the subject a lot and the paper very little. Eventually I'll share some of my public sketching practice, but the pictures are all you get for now.

I also joined a newly formed Urban Sketchers group here in town. I have only made it to one of their meetings so far, but I think I will get to more of them as the weather for hanging around outside becomes more enticing. In two weeks, we're planning to meet up at the central transit center in town, should be interesting.

Also working on getting studio space in order in the garage. I think I'll need to start with electricity and insulation, and then ventilation, and then furniture. Currently I am using some large cardboard boxes as a make-shift workbench, and running an extension cord from the laundry room whenever I need juice. Of course, working in the garage is another thing that becomes more interesting as the weather improves, because that space is not heated. Signed up for some studio hours at the university metal studio, but have done very little there, so far. Ideas are pouring out my ears, but my time and their availability hasn't lined up so well, so far. I think that will change this week.

Enh, what else is going on?

Went to a lovely show at the Albuquerque Museum, Deco Japan. The link I'm giving is for someone else's exhibition of this show, which is a traveling exhibit. It maybe will come to you, unless it already came past you. If you're a big fan of deco style graphics and prints, the show has a tremendous collection of magazine covers, matchbook covers, songbook covers, posters, and adverts. If you're more into the functional and 3D stuff, they had some fairly nifty containers, screens, kimonos, and smallish sculptures. My personal favorites were the flying fish themed items. A quick image search on 'deco japan' will get you a pretty solid idea of what's out there.

Did a wee bit of gallery-crawling this past week. Revisited my fixation on Travis Black's watercolor images of birds. Was gifted a lovely print of one of the hummingbird images by someone awesome. (Squee!!) Failed to get into the local artist quonset hut, but I will. Now that I know they close at 3pm. (Who does that??) Tripped over work by printer / painter Diana Stetson, who has some extremely harmonious work. Definitely nature-oriented, but it is actually the compositions and executions which are harmonious to me. There were plenty of other interesting works to see in the world, and Mariposa Gallery in Nob Hill had quite a few. In addition to Diana Stetson and some other intriguing artists, Mariposa also currently has an exhibit hanging from Amanda Banker, who seems to have a bit of a fixation with animal-headed portrait figures. That show is worth it if only for the smoking-jacket three quarter posed octopus headed portrait. (Which does not appear on her website, by the way, so if you want to see it, you need to go there and see it!)

Is that all? Well, it has to be enough for now, I suppose. There will be more posts on all these topics, I suspect. Probably the next exciting thing is going to be a mechanical pencil review. If that doesn't strike you as exciting, this probably isn't the blog for you.

First, pictures of my new sketchbook! I made this over the weekend. It took me longer than it probably should have, considering how complicated it isn't, but it's been a while since I made a book. Also, I didn't have the right glue, and had to do some dodgey substituting, and then also spray the covers in waterproofing stuff. .... don't ask.

The front cover.

The back cover. The covers are made with a fabric scrap I bought in the Ikea clearance room a long time ago. I bought it with no particular purpose in mind, but knew I would find something eventually. And, so I have. Vindication!

Laying open. Because it's a coptic binding, it opens pretty much totally flat, which is nice. The crease in the standard hardcover sketchbook is problematic. I'd been buying spiral bound for a while, but I don't really love them, they are just a compromise between not opening all the way, and using plain old loose leaves of paper. Which I might do next time.

Here's a shot of the spine, in case you were wondering what coptic binding means in practice. Each signature (group of pages) is stitched from the inside to the outside, connecting to the signatures that come before and after it. The first and last signatures are attached directly to the cover boards. It provides exceptional flexibility of the spine, and can also be used for a book of almost any thickness.

This picture shows the inside of the back coverboard, and some of my drafting tools. Not that you really needed to know about that, I just liked the shot.


I know it's been a while since I posted the current work in progress, and technically I am not really doing that now. HOWEVER! Here is a picture of my workspace as it sits right at the moment. The panels along the back are the pieces of a custom crate, the center of the desk has a belt buckle design I am finalizing with hopes of begining the actual piece today, and the rack on the right has a bunch of work on paper that needs to be matted, imaged for the portfolio, and filed. Also, some Sequential Tart review materials are there, and my new sketchbook that I made over the weekend.

All the little containers are writing implements, tools, etc. The pink things on the top / left are tape dispensers, which I have needed for a long time. (Yes, it IS "the little things" that make happy happen.)

Little file cabinet is full of more tools / utensils, paints, inks, etc. Trash can on the left, and the cubbies on the desk supports are full of random crap that I need without warning ... but then set aside without warning. It's a functional system, don't judge!

Chair is a swiveling kneeling desk chair. It's not super duper comfortable, but it does save my back and hips. And shoulders and neck. Also, it's really good for keeping my herniated cervical disk from pinching the nerve in my right hand. So ... comfort isn't always immediate gratification.

New bookmark today!

Here's one for you cephalopod fans ...

The major cuts on this were done on the scroll saw, and the interior / fine cuts were done with the hand saw. Definite good marks for speed and a clean edge. The drawback to using the scroller for this is that it uses the middle inch of a 6" blade -only- leaving most of the teeth totally unused by the time the blade is worn down to the point where I can't use it on the scroll saw anymore. I did not try using that blade in the hand saw afterward, mostly because I have a good sense of what happens when you have a blade that's sharp at both ends and dull in the middle.

Hint: It's not something good!

In an act of optimism, I am leaving my set-up set up so that when I get back from running errands, I can get right back to it. There is another design in my sketchbook waiting to be released into the world! I am really looking forward to that beautiful day in the future when my obsessions get rooms of their own, and I don't have to put away my toys if I want to eat dinner.

Groundhog's Day Again

That was a little joke, y'see.

Here's today's project, another prototype bookmark. Spent a lot of time doing sketches, and this is just one of the ideas I scratched out. It was easier than yesterday's, and perhaps easier than tomorrow's. I am particularly pleased with how much this one matches the sketch.



Again, a prototype. A few technical details stand between me and a finished piece, not least the question of how to harden the metal. I find myself actually wondering if I can use a stand mixer in place of a polishing tumbler.

More pictures in Flickr, just click through the pic from here.

Waiting Rooms, Pt 2

Dr. Brain's waiting rooms, Thursday afternoon, (outer and inner, 75 minutes combined)


Not composed, just freestyling.







Dr. Brain wasn't terribly interested.

Dr. F's waiting room, Friday morning. 90 minutes.








Dr. F liked it very much.


The resulting watercolor painting, Friday afternoon / evening, at home.








The cats stayed close the whole time I was working on it, but weren't impressed at all.

Time Well Spent

I've been in a lot of waiting rooms lately. I've come to love the sound of someone's eyeball creeping off a back issue of Waiting Room Quarterly and onto my paper.

*creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep*

Urban Sketching

I recently came across the Urban Sketchers blog, and have been inspired to haul my sketch book around town. Normally when I see a crapload of really amazing drawings and paintings that people have the nerve to refer to as "sketches", I retreat, feeling intimidated. For some reason this site fires me up about putting marks on the page. Today I sat on a cold cement bench in front of the Schwalbennest coffee shop and made a crude sketch of it for a while, 40 minutes maybe? My fun was cut short when a delivery truck rudely pulled up right in front of me. Bugger managed to block my line of site, the bike lane, AND was parked square in front of the no-parking sign. Dude was on a roll.

Anyway, I decided that it was fun, even if the sketch isn't amazing like a lot of what's on the Urban Sketchers site. I also decided that color is pretty important to these sketches. Since even a really basic watercolor kit is more crap than I want to juggle when I go out in the world, I decided to try taking the watercolor pencils with me. That should allow me to rough in the color, work dry (makes for quick get-aways!), and not worry about spilling stuff, etc. The ability to slap the notebook shut and cheese it is important to me.

Eventually I'll start posting some of these things here. Promise. The problem isn't that I hate it or anything like that, it's more that I'm too lazy to deal with the camera and the uploading and all that. Also, I'm really focused on a textile project right now, and I'd rather put the time into that instead.

And so I am. And yes, there will be pictures of that project, too! Until then, I highly recommend you hustle over to Urban Sketchers and dig the awesomeness. I've added a link to it from here in the link list on the right, so you can get to it any time you get the urge. It's that cool.

Shotgun Updating

Check me out, two posts in one month! It's starting to get crazy around here!

The formatting on these pictures is going to make me nuts if I goof around with it. So I'm not. Here's the rundown.

Couple sheets of paper with barely visible sketches... sketches for my next couple of projects. Hopefully those projects will be visible.

Bunch o' sticks.... if you can guess what tool I made there, you win a prize!* Double prize if you can guess whether it worked or not.

The re-do on the frame / edge. It took much less time than the first time, and is a thousand times better, but I'm still cross to have had to re-do it. Ahh, well. Live and learn. And re-do crap sometimes.

Quick watercolor painting to test out a brush brought from Beijing by a friend who visited there recently. That sucker can lay down some SERIOUS paint! Highly diggable. It will be my go-to brush of choice for watercolor tidal waves.










224214152 - sorry I didn't answer your question sooner, more pictures to come... behind the windows are pigeon holes.... square openings (16cm I think, a bit deeper than that?).

There will be more pictures when I have the front panel opening and closing and stuff.

Yes.





* There is no prize.

How These Things Begin (sort of)

Here's my sketch for the 16 windows of the
previous few posts. It's kind of similar, and
kind of ... gestural. Doing the drawing functioned more to give me the sense of what kind of lines I wanted the frames to have, than to give me the precise shapes for each of the 16 windows.

In some ways this stuff would all be easier if I were the type to plan my projects out to the last and tiniest detail before beginning to execute, but I have tried that in the past, and invariably been horribly, horribly frustrated. Because when I plan that way, I give myself no leeway for adapting to the unexpected. Materials or processes that don't work out quite as planned. When I do that much planning, I damn well expect it to work out like that!

On the other hand, when I do it this looser way, just kind of rolling with the ideas as they come, I tend to change course a bit *too* much, whether things are working or not, and I tend to waste time and effort and often materials. In this method, I have to be very careful to set firm deadlines and I have to set budget limitations, material limitations, and lock down how many changes I let myself make along the way. Project managing, basically. That turns into a tough line to toe, because it wars with my desire not to stifle creative urges. (The alternative being, frustration because my creative urges make it flat out impossible to get anything done, ever.)

Last sketch for today, I promise.

I know. Way more sketches than anyone cares to see. I like to post them here because occasionally I read back through my blog and see how things have change / stayed the same. Sometimes blogging is more like journalling, I guess.

More from the sketchbook

From the sketchbook

In no particular order, some sketches from recent times.

Framing for fun

One of my current projects is a frame. I got a calendar this year that needs one. Here is the rough sketch. It will probably not look so much like this when it is done, but this is the concept I'm starting from.

Have not yet decided whether to make it brightly colored or monochrome.

On the other hand...

Actually... the same hand. Hopefully no more hand drawing for a while. By which I mean, oh, ever.

It is a SKILL, not a TALENT.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that life drawing is a fantastic talent to have. I agree, it would be a fantastic talent to have.... if it were a talent. Which it is not. It's a skill. It can be taught, and frankly, it's not that hard to learn. I suppose it's possible that talent could make it a little easier or faster to learn... but it's also possible that talent makes it MORE difficult to learn, because it seems like it should be easier for an artistically talented person.

For me.... it's more difficult.

Here's why: For a lot of what I like to do artistically, practice isn't a big part of success. Yes, I get better as I do things more often, but in essence, I like the first try, too. This is not the case for life drawing. I get very frustrated with my life drawing skills, and I know it is because I don't practice. I've taken classes, I've read really excellent books about this. I've done a ton of professionally designed exercises. And yet.... I still suck if I don't have step by step guidance. And it's because I don't practice enough.

What you are looking at up above is (left) a drawing of my own hand I made 3 weeks ago, and (right) a drawing of my hand I made this morning, following the explicit instructions in a book by Betty Edwards called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: Workbook. If you want to learn to draw, check out her books. They are excellent. The workbook is a really good hand-holder for those of us who are unbelievable slackasses about the practice part of it.

Dude!

See that thing in the lower/left? I totally want to make that into a belt buckle. Would you wear a belt buckle like that? What if it had glass or semi-precious stone insets where the circles, tear drops and lens-shaped bits are in the drawing?

In progress, which is another way of saying...

... incomplete.

I've been trying to work out how to fill/color this one for over a week now, and it's very frustrating. I haven't found anything totally satisfying yet. This first version is a test of various types of shading, and various types of color (watercolor, pens, colored pencils...) It's not coherent, but it was kind of informative.

I do wish I'd taken a photo of the second version (the one that's got low-key colors and a lot of grey tones) before I started coloring it, because it was all grey tones--I'd inked it with dilute india ink and a paint brush, and where each 'tile' overlapped another, the ink was a tiny bit darker.



It looked nifty, but kind of flat, so I started coloring it. and it's not
bad with this color scheme, but I'm also not satisfied...
so I started adding more tint and shading on top of the color
with a super fine black pen.








After that, I tried a version with all color, and no black or ink. I like that one, but couldn't really decide which color scheme was best, so I tried several.

There were a few other color tests along the way (Blogger only lets me put 5 pictures/post, and the other two weren't all that exciting anyway, so I'm leaving them out.) However! This post might at least be informative for those who think visual art springs fully formed from the brain to the finished product. O! how I wish that were true. It takes so many steps, and so much time, to even begin to approach the realization of the idea.


Before all that, of course, the original pencil version, and an ink tracing to use so the original/design don't get lost or damaged.

Lotus concept sketch

Haven't done anything with this since completing this initial design, but I like it, so I put it up on the wall of designs I like that I haven't done anything with. It's getting kind of crowded over there. In fact, now that I've put this one up, there isn't really any more room on that wall. Guess I need to either do something with some of those designs, or stop making new ones...