Print-ku

Educational, that's what the last couple of days have been! I've been working on my print for the Salida Regional Library's upcoming exhibition, "Haiku: Capturing the Essence," and it's been a different process for me in several ways.

1) I'm collaborating with poet Eduardo Rey Brummel, who has written an evocative and epic multi-stanza haiku. It's not often (read: almost never) that I work from someone else's words unless it's an illustration project. Art and illustration are completely different beasts for me, partly because most of my illustration work is in paint rather than relief prints, but also because my illustrations most often accompany educational text rather than poetry. They're darn literal.

For this project I'm trying to take a different tack, trying to break out of a straightforward landscape view. And I'm trying for subtle. (That "essence" thing in the exhibition title.) I struggle with subtle.

2) New technique! Elvis Press-ley is playing a role in this piece, although parts are still done by hand.

3) New materials! New papers. Mica powder.

4) Multiple blocks. This is the part that's making everything so complicated. Well, maybe not complicated... the blocks themselves are quite simple. But instead of being obliged to move steadily forward from one step to the next as I am in a reduction print, I have the luxury of printing elements lots of different ways until I find something I like. So of course I can't stop dinking around with all the pieces.

Here's where we are so far.

Eduardo's poem employs "sparkly" language: Words like shimmer and glisten. I like the imagery, but since I'm aiming for something more like a whisper than a shout, rhinestones and a tube of glitter glue are out of the question. The solution turned out to be mica powder, which I got from McClain's.

In this image, shot at a weird angle so you can see what's happening, I printed a tracery of branches in white ink on white paper... then sprinkled mica dust onto the wet ink. (Just like glitter onto glue in the days before they premixed them.) It's subtle (hooray!) and changes according to the angle of view. I have no idea if it's going to show well under glass, but hey... it's worth a try.

Second step was a block of blended color. This shape is, I hope, suggesting a waterway– an image also present in Eduardo's poem. I really like that some of the mica-embellished white branches show through. It becomes less obvious in the next step... and part of me was tempted to stop at this point. It's an effect worth keeping in mind for future projects.

No more suggestion here. The waterway and its surrounding vegetation are defined. This step took me FOREVER to figure out. I originally printed it black, but that seemed too contrasty. (Subtle, Sherrie! Subtle.) I kept lightening the gray... then tried a brown, and a blue, and ultimately ended up with a blend that goes from light gray to a gray-green.

Naturally, my camera doesn't manage subtle very well, either. Here's a closer look at the slightly debossed footprint barely visible in the lower right corner of the landscape. (No, really... it's there. Look harder.) Another image from Eduardo's poem.

I'm feeling okay about the piece so far, although it still feels like something is missing. There's a lot of circularity to the poem, but in my early sketches for this piece a blatant big circle seemed... well... blatant. The good news is that I have a ridiculous number of experimental pieces to keep playing with until I decide. Or the deadline arrives. Whichever comes first.

So what now?

There's often a bit of a lull after I finish a long and complex print, while I try to decide what image to tackle next. But this week there's no time to dawdle... I've got exhibition deadlines!

As a result, Elvis Press-ley and I were up late last night... and back at it first thing this morning. I'm still working through some of the ideas I have for the poetry/visual art collaboration project with haiku writer Eduardo Rey Brummel– experimenting with paper, ink, mica dust (!), embossing... Whoo-ee, am I making a MESS!  But I think I finally have a plan and all the pieces to make it happen. (I think.)

I had originally imagined this piece would be a "one-out," a monotype of sorts, since it's vastly different from my usual approach. But now that I've spent so much time experimenting and creating blocks and such, it seems like editioning is a good idea. We'll see if it turns out to be something that I can make multiples of.

For now, however, I need a little break, so it's off to find some shoes and take a walk to the post office or something. Stay tuned... it could get very strange around here.

Splashing to the finish

Alrighty then! The only thing more satisfying than almost-complete prints on the drying rack is complete prints on the drying rack.

It's funny how often I think an image looks pretty good, and then I add one more color and I wonder why I thought the previous step looked complete. It's also funny (in a warped sort of way) how often "one more color" leads to "okay, one MORE color."

Color 10

One last dark just below the duck and the piece is finished. Doesn't have a title yet, though....

11th and final color, linocut, 12 x 9 inches
Click to embiggen

I learned a lot through the process of this particular piece, and I'm already chomping at the bit to tackle some more complex water images. (Wendy, I'm starting to understand your compulsion! ;-) But first I need to get moving on the piece for the haiku project. My efforts so far have been very experimental... it's time for some focus!

This print is looking just ducky!

Blame it on the wind, I guess. I'm still flopping about all over the place, restless as the air outside.

But it's the wind that kept me inside on an otherwise stellar day, so I guess I can thank it for the fine progress achieved on the current reduction linocut. Well, that... and the fact that three of the four colors I put down today involved very tiny sections.

Having learned my lesson (sort of) from complications caused previously by sloppy inking, I decided that the colors immediately following last week's blue would be inked using stencils. Good plan!

Hmm. Did you know there was a critter in this piece? I bet not. But a little light gray shape gave away most of the surprise immediately. (Color 6)

Next up: Little green shape. Very little green shape. Registration! Eek! (Color 7)

We're now on color #8... a sort of russet... So far, so good! (At this point I'm hollering at the DM from my studio: "I'm making duckies! I'm making duckies!" He is alternately laughing and rolling his eyes.)

I was going to wait to print color #9, but I was on a roll (printmaking pun not intended) and really wanted the satisfaction of a dark color to end the day. It's not the last pass, but we're getting very close now.

Unfortunately the camera isn't picking up the color very well under studio lights. The dark brown isn't as orange as it looks here.. in fact it has a fair amount of blue in it. (Nor does it have the weird shadow that appears in the detail shot below.) Darn digital cameras, anyway.

I haven't yet decided if I have one or two more colors to go. Mostly the final dark will define some details in the duck, but I'm not sure if I want a few subtle shapes in the upper right corner. It needs a little time to dry now, so I've got a day or two to make those decisions.

I'm really pleased that I went ahead with one more color today... it's hugely satisfying to look up at the drying rack and see an almost-finished new piece.

Settling down on a blustery day

It's the end of March. How the heck did that happen?

Saturday's field sketching workshop at Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory was great fun, although when I first got up that morning I was a little worried. It looked like this:

RMBO's Old Stone House Education Center

Atmospheric and lovely, but potentially challenging for a class that wants to be drawing outdoors. Thankfully it evaporated by mid-morning, as fog in the arid interior is wont to do, and we got to spend some time enjoying the early signs of spring.

Sarah exploring the details of new green grass two hours later.

I'm finally home for a several week stretch and it feels like coming out of an odd dream. Today I've been on my feet all day... charging from task to task and trying to wrestle my life back into some sense of order. No, really.

Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, the first hour-and-a-half of footwork was done on my usual morning walk. Getting outside for a bit is imperative, even (or especially) with piles of stuff everywhere in the studio and ridiculously changeable spring weather out of the studio. We're having a doozy of a day here, moving minute by minute through sun and clouds, ferocious wind, and even some snow showers.

Yes, that's snow on the left and sun on the right.
Frantz Lake, Salida, this morning.

The rest of the day has been errands (accountant to pick up taxes, framer to pick up work, post office to ship aforementioned work to a show, blah blah blah) and administrative tasks, but OOOOH! Look what arrived in the post:

I (Heart) weird chunks of wood.

Uh huh. It's a weirdly-shaped piece of wood. And I'm excited about it. It's going to be my contribution to the City of the World Monumental Collaborative Puzzle Print! (If that's not a mouthful, I don't know what is.) In short, over 100 printmakers from around the world have each received a small piece of one of five large wood blocks to carve and return to the organizer, Maria Arango. She will reassemble the bits and print them all together as five enormous prints... which each participant will receive. Amazing, eh? Personally I think Maria's insane, but she's organized projects like this before so I guess she knows what she's doing. Maria is documenting the process at the blog link above, and I encourage you to check out all the work she has done to get the project to this stage.

Hooray! Writing a blog post means I've been sitting for a little while, but it's time to jump up and get back to it. There are prints to be made, by golly!

Tweak

Yeah, I decided the blue was a little too dark. Too bad, really, because it meant an additional pass that wouldn't have been necessary if I'd been paying better attention.

So now it's time to get nervous about a bunch of tiny little color bits in the middle of the print. Registration? I think it will be challenging.

And of course there will be another interruption before all this is through, since I'm off again this weekend to teach a field sketching workshop at the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory's headquarters at Barr Lake State Park. (There's still room in the class, so if you're in the Denver area, come on out!)

Blue + Yellow = Blue! Hooray!

A nervous moment this morning when I lifted the corner of the first blue-over-yellows attempt...

Who says you can't print blue over yellow? Click to embiggen.

Yup. That'll do. Actually, I might make another blue pass tomorrow... the value seems a skosh darker than what I want, but I need to wait until it dries more before I decide. Sherrie-the-Impatient's need to get this blue down this morning when yesterday's yellow was still tacky made for a little more color lifting than was... erm... entirely necessary.

I was so nervous about this step that my original design called for a lot of this blue to get covered up in subsequent passes. Now I think I might fudge the design and try to hold a little more blue, just because I like it so much.

So... for those of you wondering if I sold my soul or something to get this to work... the short answer is no! I'm working with oil-based inks, and the addition of copious amounts of titanium white to ultramarine blue made it opaque enough cover the yellows. I used no transparent base at all.

I would have liked to have the blue transparent... I love the luminosity of transparent inks over the bright white Hosho paper... but this is not an image for which I wanted to carve multiple blocks. I lose interest if things get too complicated and if I can't do a certain amount of "impulse carving" along the way. Now that I know this works, though... I'm already thinking about other images.

Trying to find a groove

It's definitely a funky time here in the Heart of the Rockies. My schedule has been as erratic as the weather, which really doesn't do a darn thing for my productivity. Last weekend's out of town workshop was followed by one day of catching up and one day of nose-to-the-grindstone working before heading out of town again for three more days. This weekend has been all about catching up again.

The schedule calls for me to be away again this coming weekend, although I won't know for certain about that until tomorrow. The to-do list is getting longer rather than shorter. Does anyone else feel like they want the hour "lost" in the recent time change returned immediately?

I did get the fourth color pass carved and printed on the current linocut today. The evolution of this image is feeling extremely disjointed... I'm not at all sure where it's headed. Which, come to think of it, is how I feel about a lot of things right now. Hmm. Maybe disjointed is the groove?

Winging back from a workshop

Wow! Did we have GREAT weather for the Monte Vista Crane Festival, or what? Sure, some stout wind from time to time, but the skies were clear and temps moderate and the sandhill cranes completely cooperative. Saturday morning's sketching class was great fun, full of enthusiastic participants whose names all ended in "eeee". Almost. Once we declared Tina's new moniker to be "Teenie," she joined the ranks of Sherrie, Kathy, Nancy, Bonnie, Lindy, Peggy, and Colby. Thank you all for a great morning.

As with photos of autumn aspen trees, I have to wonder how many pictures of gray birds in yellow grass against blue sky I really need. But I keep taking them, anyway.

Tomorrow it's back to work, and carving on the linocut already in progress.

Spring ahead? Not with THIS print.

There's a pile of stuff by the front door, ready to be schlepped to the car and then south to Monte Vista tomorrow. I'm delighted that the weather seems to be cooperating for Saturday's field sketching workshop... although I'd be even happier if the word "breezy" weren't in the forecast. (When the National Weather Service says it will be "breezy" around here it usually means hold on to your hat. Or sketchbook, as the case may be.)

The progress of the current linocut seems to be stretched out by a sudden flurry of other activities: workshops every other weekend, contract jobs getting off the ground, logistical planning for events this summer. Getting the third color down yesterday in the midst of all the other stuff was really satisfying.

I also spent a little time mucking about with the new baby press. I'm not yet completely in love, but I've heard that happens sometimes with new arrivals. Bonding is not always immediate.

I tried a little woodcut, my first since last summer's seminar at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. A small scrap of thin plywood served as the block, but I can't say I was satisfied with it as a matrix. Too splintery, and too much "plate noise" in the background. I am enjoying the experimentation process: using different papers and different combinations of blanket, tympan, and press pressure. In this case I was also making bleed prints, which I never do in lino.

After this weekend's workshop I'll only be home a couple of days before heading out again. Could this be the most protracted print production ever? Our clocks might be springing ahead this weekend, but linos are definitely dawdling.

Field Sketching and Book Building Workshops at RMBO

This weekend I'll be teaching a field sketching workshop at the Monte Vista Crane Festival. If you can't make it to Monte Vista, how about Brighton, Colorado? Field sketching and handmade books at the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory's Old Stone House, March 26 and 27. Details on the RMBO blog or my "Upcoming Workshops" page above.