The Week's Outline

This week is feeling a lot more normal than the previous ones have. I'm back to a lot of sketching and drawing, and this week I'm gearing up for some screen printing. I've tried some test prints with the woodblock and I really, really hated it. I don't even want to do a larger block. It feels like I wasted all those hours carving and then all that time trying to get the print right. But it's not a waste if you learn what NOT to do, right?

Which means I need to consider what I'll be doing for the rest of the week. And that's defiantly screen printing. I prepped a screen and I'm just trying to finalize and pick a design. Choices, choices. I think I'm going to go with "Punk-erina". You'll see what that is eventually, I don't like posting my designs online.

All told, the hours break down so far this week is:

Studio: 4.5 hours
Blogging/Reflection: Three quarters of an hour

Exploring Marks

This week has been all about exploring marks making in both tried and true methods of printing as well as new techniques. I have done a lot of drawing this week, so I took a break from it with more drawing for this class. Or rather I did a different type of drawing, which counted as a break to me. I have a stack of prints that I have been working back into to add dimension and a sense of activating the prints. My methodology for doing this has been to use pastels and charcoal to give a richness to the prints that they do not have when they are just a single flat color. I wonder if adding multiple colors in the printing method would change that and will have to try it to see if this works for me.

I think that it could be interesting to put multiple colors in one printing process for me. It has a personal connection with my interest in comic book processes. While the printing process has changed for them over the years, the benday dot printing method sees to resonate with this kind of idea, I'm going to investigate it further I think.

Studio time (various locations): 7 hours
Blog time (including research): 3 hours

(One of these days I will remember to click post before I close the tab. This was supposed to be posted on Thursday.)

New things to test!

Like any other weekend, this weekend is going to be busy and hectic, but I am determined to complete everything I need to do. To help myself get the blog done for the weekend, I'm starting it before I do the work and as I work I'll add on to it once I've actually done the work.

That said, I am working on a woodblock test! I'm excited to try this. Learning and experiencing new media techniques are very zen for me... when they're working. I think this is because of the charge I get from learning and accomplishing something new. I'm that much more pumped to go do other artwork.

I'm starting small and working on a block that is maybe five by five to get the experience of carving a piece of wood. It has been a very unique experience  I haven't done any carving before, but it's a very calming time. The block itself may or may not be successful when I go to print it. We'll find out next week, but I have high hopes. I have already used this image in litho prints and am planning to go back into them to get some more depth in them. I have hopes that the aid of the grain will give this piece a texture that the others do not. Texture in my drawing is definitely my thing, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Studio (Home): 3 to 3 and a half hours
Blog: 1 hour

Size and Sketch

My Monday was an interesting mixed studio where I was working on a few different classes at once. I did some sketching for Printmaking but nothing was really jumping out at me. I would say that I had a solid hour that was definitely dedicated to printmaking sketches that were less than successful before I gave up and moved on to other work.

However, my Wednesday was a productive, interesting day. I pulled five different prints and working on various sizes with some test sketches. I am almost certain that I finally have the correct mix of gum arabic and water down, the prints were coming out perfectly. That was an exciting discovery. I am still rushing when I go to line up the paper on the prints, but I'll get it to register right with some more practice. The typerwriter paper has been helpful to learn that more than anything.

I had a really interesting sketch happen that fits into my body-image theme. I want to use it to experiment with printing multiple colors through lithography. The basic gist is that it's a figure all wrapped up in a cloth tape. Instead of numbers there are words that the figure is thinking because of the numbers on the tape that respond to their measurements. We'll see how it goes, but I'd really love to see the figure in grey scale and the tape as bright yellow. Fingers crossed.

Studio Hours (in SCA, Monday): 1 hr
Studio Hours (in the print studio, Wednesday): 4 hrs
Blog Time: 1 hr

(Oops. I thought I hit post for this on Wednesday night, good thing I checked when I started writing my blog on Friday.)

Take Number... Are We Still Keeping Track?

It's half way through the semester and I feel like this blog has been a series of failed starts and restarts... and restarts. I'm really and truly horrible at this sort of thing, but I'm going to just keep on trying... and trying... and trying...

And while I'm trying to get this wrong I'm going to be doing some studio work too.

... It's going to be a lot of studio work, actually. Which is as it should be.

I looked at my table of prints earlier this week and I was actually very proud of what I had accomplished so far. They aren't traditional by any means, but that has been the work that I have been producing all semester in all my classes. That said, I think I understand why I have to show a traditional work presentation as well as my present it how I want it method. There's a saying in the creative writing world that applies here I think. "You have to know what grammar rule you are breaking in order to break it."

That said, I'm going to try to create some works that are presented in a traditionally-bordered and traditionally-signed format. But I also want to keep playing with the presentation method if I think the piece needs something different. I even tried to size the paper correctly today! I was excited with that.

 

Forgive the less-than-high-quality pictures, I'll take better ones later. I was getting back in the swing of things printing-wise today, so there were still some errors in these attempts. However I kind of figured that was going to be the case with these first prints. Rather than get frustrated with them, I decided to give a new kind of paper a try and worry a little less about the formatting. I found a box of old, cream colored type-writer paper at my house years ago and thought it would be perfect for printing. I think I was right. But you should take a look and see (still sorry for the quality).

 

 

I did a little experimenting with the boarders here as well. I really like to see the color bleed and smear, but I will make an honest go at clean-edged prints... another day. :)

Studio: 4 hours
Blog: 1 hour

New Considerations

02/25

Today was a lot of drawing in the studio. My camera was, unfortunately, dead. I was drawing in various locations from 1:30 to 6:00, so when I have a working camera, I will post pictures of the sketches I have been working on. After some consideration, I will try to have a total of eight different litho works printed, I will at least attempt a wood block print and I would like to create five different designs for screen printing.

Uh Oh

02/20

I met with Heather today to confirm that I was doing everything up to standards with the blog. The previous three blogs were posted on a delay in the hopes that I would get them right. Fingers crossed that I managed it this time.